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HP Processor Board 82321

inakito

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 5, 2011
Messages
297
Location
Spain
Hi.
Recently I have bought an old HP Processor 82321. This board was used on PCs to provide a 68000 environment to run HP Basic.
I got the two install disks on hpmuseum.net and have read the few documentation I have found. But have been unable to install the software.
It complains about no space on target disk, no drivers installed, etc... Running basic.exe gives several errors related to missing drivers.

Has anyone some experience with this board ?

inakito.
 
I bought it from a surplus seller, although the board is brand new. (it did cost 35-USD plus shipping).
Yes, it is an ISA card. You can see a picture of the board on hpmuseum.net (the Australian site). It is a whole 68000 computer in a single board (with 1MB of RAM upgradable upto 4MB).
I have finally been able to install the software. The problem was the first diskette image I used was wrong (teledisk images). I used I new image and installed fine.
The board is working fine too. Although it a full length ISA board, I have been able to place the board on a Compaq Portable 486C, which, I believe, converts it in one of the smaller HP-Basic computer controllers I know of!:).
The HP-Basic version is not the latest on the planet but it is pretty "advanced" for its age (version 5.0). I use the latest HTBasic on my Windows-PC and it is very similar.
 
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Fantastic! Now all you need is stack (or a rack) of HP-IB controlled instruments, and you have a fun system to work with.
 
It happens that i do own a lot of GPIB instruments. Usually i use C over Windows and a NI GPIB USB interface, but using HP basic from a genuine HPcontroller is much more fun!
 
Indeed. At my first job, we had a really nice ATS (automated test station) for testing communication radios. IT had a HP 9826 / 9836 (I can't remember which), a rack of instruments and a "robot" part where stepper motors was used to operate the controls on the radio. All driven by RMB from the HP. As it came (the ATS was built by an external vendor) it didn't do a stellar job, but my radio-repairing colleagues soon had modified the supplied test programs so that the ATS performed very well. On "trick" I remember was how you operated the frequency / channel selectors on the radios; they were rotary knobs and if you just turned to the correct position on an old radio it would happen that it wouldn't make good contact in that position. Easy solution: rotate one step more and then back again.

The ATS wasn't necessarily quicker on a test than a human (well, it didn't have coffee breaks), but it scored very high on repeatability. And it produced nice test reports. :)
Fun times!

Unfortinately, this was before digital cameras, so I don't think I have any photos of it.
 
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IIRC only the last revision of this hardware and the later revision of the software required to drive it are actually capable of working on an arbitrary PC Clone (i.e. not an HP Vectra). The earliest ones are even limited by which particular model of HP Vectra PC they will work in.
 
Actually i am not the first one to have used a Compaq Portable with this board. In the HP Basic 6.2 manual there is a specific mention about compatibility with the plasma display found on earlier Compaq Portable machines. So, at that time someone already was using this machine to work with the processor board.

Now am looking for the 82360A GPIO board which attachs to the processor board. But have found none. Was able to find one in Ebay Australia but the seller could not find the board! If anyone has one for sale, please let me know.
 
Now am looking for the 82360A GPIO board which attachs to the processor board. But have found none. Was able to find one in Ebay Australia but the seller could not find the board! If anyone has one for sale, please let me know.

You missed this one which sold back in December. That one was listed for a few months before it finally sold. I was tempted to buy it myself but never did.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/360666882510

I have 2 of the 82321 boards and 2 of the improved version 82324 boards.
 
I spot that one too on eBay, but the seller removed it from sale at the last moment. I asked for it but was not available.
I have recently bought one 82324 Rev B. I did not know that both boards could be fitted at the same time; up to three boards can be fitted at the same time!. You can have them running at the same time on different programs while you work with DOS! Pretty impressive isn't it?
BTW, I performed some speed checks comparisons between both boards running the same program and the 82324 is more than twice faster than the 82321.
 
Actually I did try the Pascal disk images. But was unable to install it on my system because, except the first diskette all of them are LIFT. I did not find a way to convert these images to physical diskettes!:-(
Other than this , I have found there is no much information on HP Pascal. I only found one manual about installation and a brief reference guide. I may be wrong but, was Pascal actually used in HP control systems?
 
Apparently the way to install it is, first copy the floppy 6, labeled as "CopyMe" to your hard disk.
Then enter the command BOOT.EXE. If you try HPWMain.EXE it complains about 'system not booted' so it seems BOOT.exe is the first thing to do.

When you invoke Boot.exe the Pascal engine starts, detects some components (somewhat like HP Basic does) and then pauses and asks for "SYSTEM" diskette.
In the set of diskettes there is one labeled "SYSVOL" so I would guess it is asking for this one.

I did a Teledisk copy of image CP12.TD0 "SYSVOL" to a 3.5 diskette (although the image comes from a 5.25 low density disk i did not have a 5.25 floppy drive avaiable).

Then the Pascal boot system reads the floppy and shows the following error:

:HP9122 RMV 1500,0,0
Read Error

So, apparently it cannot read the contents of the disk, probably because it is not a low density diskette? I don't know.
 
I'll have to try the Pascal software install from 5.25 disks. Might take a bit to get that setup. I need to tinker with the boards anyway. The second 82321 board I have I only recently acquired and I haven't tried it yet. Plus I bought some DRAM chips to install on the 82321 boards to bring them both up to the 4MB max from their current 1.5MB
 
More on running Pascal on the coprocessor board...
I have taken a look at the HP/200 Emulator (hpmuseum.net) and I have found the 'system' disk is not 'Sysvol' , but the diskette labeled as 'Boot' (diskette 3 of 12).
You must run in first place the CONF.EXE utility and check you first drive is pointing to your floppy drive so you know it is used as LIF. As for emulation I have selected "9836 Combined" mode. There others to chose from but I have not checked them.
This mode does not work with the 82324. It works only with 82321. Probably the Pascal diskettes set is different for the 82324.
Then you need to run Pascal.BAT, sorry I missed this one!, not Boot.exe as I stated in my previous post.
This time the System loaded fine but.... it crashes some seconds later.:-(
Probably the system file does not load well. Perhaps using 5.25 diskettes would be a better idea. Another thing to check would be copying the LIF files to DOS diskettes using LIFUTIL, but I have been unable to complete this step. Again, probably a 5.25 floppy drive would help.
It would be great to find the Pascal images in 3.5 floppy format.
 
Hi,
I am looking around to get a refurbished 82324 card. Care to let me know where to find it? Thanks in advance
You missed this one which sold back in December. That one was listed for a few months before it finally sold. I was tempted to buy it myself but never did.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/360666882510

I have 2 of the 82321 boards and 2 of the improved version 82324 boards.
 
Any of you folks want to sell 82324 Super viper card? I have a data gathering system using the 82321, but would like to speed it up. I am not sure which part might be the slowest- but the Viper is one of 3 parts.
 
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