Found some stuff at the scrapyard

tony duell ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk
Sun Jul 17 23:41:17 CDT 2016



> The  HPIL thinkjet version  was also used with  the   hp portable  and hp
> portable plus    laptops.
> we have  some of them in the SMECC  here... but    back  when I was   CEO
> Computer Exchange  inc   we  sold lost of these..  it was a small laptop
> with applications in ROM but also had a HPIL  3 1/2 disc and an  HPIL

Yes. 80C86 (not 8088) based, there is a 16 bit data bus in there.

The Portable (HP110) has built-in RAM that can't be expanded. One of
the boards contains the processor and a lot of DIP-packaged 8K*8 SRAMs.
The Portable Plus used surface-mount 8K*8 SRAMs and could take more
on a plug-in 'RAM Drawer'. 


> Hey!
> Remember  to the hp 45 calc.. had  HPIL   interface also...

I think you mean the HP41 (LCD alphanumeric calculator) or maybe
the HP75 (handheld machine running BASIC, very similar to the HP85
in architecture). The HP45 was a simple-ish non-programmable 
scientific calculator with an LED display. And an undocumented
stopwatch

> There was also a gaggle of  cards to the  PC and the HP  150 TOUCHSCREEN
> that  would  talk to  HPIL and  also  on IBM side  HPIL  plus  I seem to
> remember HPIB  cards  too.

The HP150 had HPIB as standard. There was an optional card that
added HPIL and a Centronics port. That Centronics port was a 
mess. HP decided to use female DB25s for the serial ports. So to
avoid confusion they used a male DB25 for the Centronics port. 
Only problem was the PCB was laid out for a female DB25 using
IBM PC pinouts. With the result that the male version ended up 
effectively mirror-reversed, strobe on pin 13, etc.

There were, indeed, HP ISA HPIB and HPIL cards. From memory the
latter (at least) will not run in any reasonbly fast machine (8MHz CPU
clock tops?) There was also an HPIL card for the Integral (portable 
unix machine) but I have never seen it. Was there a DIO HPIL card?

[...]

> I may be  wrong but I remember a  HPIL a HPIB a Parallel    and maybe a
> Serial interface  version of the HP Thinkjet

I have come across 6 versions : 
HPIB, HPIL, RS232, Centronics, Portable (battery powered Centronics) and
IIRC an enhanced version of the RS232 one.


> Now there was another interface not to be confused  with the HPIL it  was
> called HP HIL HP HUMAN INTERFACE LOOP I remember?  it was   what the mouse
> used on the  hp 150  etc...

Yes. They are often confused... But very different to the user and electrically.

> I may still still have  my  orig  HP   Thinkjet  service training course

I think you can get the service manual for the Thinkjet (probably only
covers the original 4 versions) from the Australian Museum.

-tony


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