The Museum of HP Calculators

HP Forum Archive 21

[ Return to Index | Top of Index ]

USB-41 status update.
Message #1 Posted by DiegoDiaz on 14 Apr 2012, 2:03 p.m.

Hi all,

First the good news, most of the first orders have already been shipped; a confirmation mail has been sent with tracking info.

Bad news: my desktop's hard drive decided to stop working a few days ago. This has no effect on the production run, but prevents me from working in the development of the new version of the configuration utility, required to reconfigure the Clonix part of the USB-41 interface module.

All units have been shipped with the 82143A emulation preconfigured, so they'll be fully operational as described in the manual.

Will let you know as soon as I can have my system back to "normal" condition and the new ClonixConfig available (hopefully in a couple of weeks)

Fortuantelly I'm one of the two persons in the world who have double back-ups of *everything* (and hope the other person is reading this... :-))

Will keep you posted.

All the best from Spain.

Diego.

      
Re: USB-41 status update.
Message #2 Posted by Luiz C. Vieira (Brazil) on 14 Apr 2012, 2:09 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by DiegoDiaz

HI, Diego;

I must confess I'm one of these: I keep AT LEAST one copy of every slice of data I have, and the most important of them I add a second AND/OR a third copy. Am I a data 'hoarder'?

Cheers.

Luiz (Brazil)

            
Re: USB-41 status update.
Message #3 Posted by Fabricio on 14 Apr 2012, 3:45 p.m.,
in response to message #2 by Luiz C. Vieira (Brazil)

I´m in the club too. I have 2 identical copies of everything (either work or personal), and a 3rd one from the most important things; none of them are in the same physical address also.

But I learnt the hard way: I lost one server with close to 75% of my office work in 2005, and another one in 2006. I still remember those painful days...

                  
Re: USB-41 status update.
Message #4 Posted by Luiz C. Vieira (Brazil) on 14 Apr 2012, 4:01 p.m.,
in response to message #3 by Fabricio

Quote:
But I learnt the hard way(...)
So did I... B^(
                        
Re: USB-41 status update.
Message #5 Posted by Diego Diaz on 14 Apr 2012, 4:27 p.m.,
in response to message #4 by Luiz C. Vieira (Brazil)

Hi,

Quote:
But I learnt the hard way(...)

But... Is there *another* way? :-o

Someone should tell me about those kind of things...

Cheers. ;-)

Edited: 14 Apr 2012, 4:29 p.m.

                              
Re: USB-41 status update.
Message #6 Posted by Jake Schwartz on 15 Apr 2012, 10:14 a.m.,
in response to message #5 by Diego Diaz

IMHO, you can never have too much redundancy. It seems that Mother Nature has already learned this, in that a copy of our DNA is in each cell of our bodies...

Jake

      
Re: USB-41 status update.
Message #7 Posted by Les Wright on 14 Apr 2012, 5:58 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by DiegoDiaz

Diego, thank you for shipping my Nov-64 today.

Where can I learn more about USB-41? I am not seeing anything on your Clonix site.

Les

            
Re: USB-41 status update.
Message #8 Posted by Diego Diaz on 14 Apr 2012, 6:16 p.m.,
in response to message #7 by Les Wright

Hi Les,

The page I was preparing for my site was lost when my hard drive crashed. I'm confident I'll have it ready by the next week, but there are many applications and documents to re-install/restore, so I cannot tell for sure.

In the meantime you can find info on the USB-41 interface module (and about its current functional application) at:

this link for the last thread: http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/archv021.cgi?read=216920#216920

this one for the previous note: http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/archv021.cgi?read=212776

and this one to the manual and demo 82143A utility download: http://www.clonix41.org/Projects/USB-82143A/USB-82143A.zip

Also at a user's request I've extracted some relevant info regarding the USB-41 power features.

I'm still testing the many possible scenarios for powering the HP-41 using the USB-41 interface.

Here is what I've found so far:

-USB-41 can provide power undefinitely without batteries inserted, even when running a program continuously (tested for more the 24 hours) provided no other devices are connected.

-Halfnuts will always show "BAT" indicator when powered from the USB-41, but will also work as expected for as long as necessary.

-Some fullnuts also lite the "BAT" indicator. I've only found this behaviour in a few early HP-41C though. Again, they work as expected no matter how long they're running.

-Card Reader cannot be used without batteries, the "LOW BAT" message will appear in the display as soon as a card is inserted.

-Most units (including CL) can also run indefinetely with both USB-41 and NoV-64. Tested with a complete DISASM of the page #6 (-PRINTER-). Some, however, showed the "BAT" indicator.

Some other peripherals like the Wand and HP-IL may have different effect in the power usage of the 41 but as long as you use it without any other modules/peripherals you can have it permanently connected and powered.

The USB-41 includes a Schottky diode so no power will "travel" back to the USB port from the HP-41. The other way around can be certainly possible, but since USB supplies 5v and the diode drop is about 0.4v the batteries will havve to be below 4.6v (mostly depleted) to be "overpassed" by the USB power. Should this case ever happen it won't hurt the batteries either since there is another internal protection diode in the battery line of the HP-41.

Hope this helps.

Best wishes from the Canary Islands.

Diego.

Edited: 14 Apr 2012, 6:20 p.m.

[ Return to Index | Top of Index ]

Go back to the main exhibit hall