41 Programs for 7470 Plotter - Why so few?

[Sylvain Cote]

Hello Angel,

When I ran the page 33 test this morning I got the same error.

Here is my small investigation ...

I launched the sniffer to look at what was going on on the wire.

Code:

UNL     RFC     
AAU     RFC     
AAD  2  LAD 01  RFC     
DAB 49  DAB 50  DAB 20  DAB 30  DAB 2C  DAB 30  DAB 2C  DAB 31 DAB 30  DAB 38  DAB 30  DAB 30  DAB 2C  DAB 37  DAB 36  DAB 30 DAB 30  DAB 0D  DAB 0A  DAB 4F  DAB 45  DAB 3B  UNL     RFC     
TAD 01  RFC     
DAB 33  DAB 0D  DAB 0A  NRD     ETO     UNT     RFC     
AAU     RFC     
AAD  2  TAD 01  RFC     
DAB 60  ETO     LAD 01  RFC     
UNL     RFC

Translation

Code:

- loop management
- set plotter as listener
- send data to the plotter -> IP 0,0,10800,7600[CR][LF]
- plotter signify an error -> OE; -> Output Error
- set plotter as talker
- get error (part 1) from the plotter -> 0x33 [CR][LF] -> Code 3 = Out-of-range parameters
- get error (part 2) from the plotter -> 0x60 -> ??? do not known what it mean,  I will investigate later
- loop management

The error is related to the HP-GL IP command sent by the 82184A LIMIT function.
The parameters at LBL 50 are 0 270 0 190
Some math: 10800 / 270 = 40 and 7600 / 190 = 40 -> ok, my scale is 40
I then opened the HP-7470A manual for page limits at page 2-2 -> US = 191 x 257 mm & A4 = 191 x 272 mm
Aha! my plotter was set to US so the maximum was 191x40=7640 by 257x40=10280 and the LIMIT is sending 10800
I then changed the switch to A4, power down/up the plotter to make it read the switch change,
find A4 paper sheets which is pretty rare in North-America, rerun the example and voila my updated RAM version works.

My next steps is to do a diff on all the source code and run the examples as I finish sections.
I will keep you posted as I progress.

Best regards,

Sylvain