80 Series Newbie

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

For HPIB do you mean for the 85B or the storage server end?. For the 85B there is only the 82937A, I have an extra if you have trouble finding one. For your PC that plan to run HPDrive on, if it has ISA bus slots, the ISA bus adapters are usually less expensive and any card based on the NEC D7210 or derivatives should work. HP cards do not work as the are based on the TI 9914 and are unable to support the Amigo Identify protocol, which violates the GPIB standard. Pretty much any of the National Instruments ISA or PCI adapters will work, details are on the HPdrive web page.

The 85B has the base Mass Storage ROM built in, this will give you access to Amigo devices like your 9121. To access SS/80 devices you need the extended mass storage ROM. The ROMs for 83/85 are different from the ROMs for the 86/87 due to the extended memory implementation on the 86/87. Original ROMs are not always easy to obtain however images of the ROMs are readily available, which lead me to design and build an EPROM card, which never has gone beyond the prototype stage maybe I should look into laying out a PCB and having some cards made.