HP "Human Interface Loop" Information Needed

No, but check out these web pages -- plenty of people have interfaced HP-IL to various homebrew devices:

I was amazed to find that there's still a lot of active development with HP-41 calculators, which popularized HP-IL.

---Joel

I thought it was HPIL, Hewlett-Packard Interface Loop, by analogy with HPIB. As an undergraduate I wanted one of their HPIL plotting printers for my HP41C.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Hi Phil... Actually, that is a *different* interface bus. It was a low data rate (something like 160Kbit) bus for use, as you mention, calculators, etc. I think that some test equipment used it also.

The HIL bus was also a serial bus somewhat like an ancient USB. It could daisy chain up to 7 input devices (keyboard, mouse, trackball, etc). HP computers used this up to about 1996, when they finally gave in and went with the PS/2 bus to do the same thing. They put out an interface manual that I am trying to track down. Jim

HP were usually good about patenting such things. Although the patent application may not be under the marketting speak name. You may be able to find enough technical detail in that for your needs. HP-HIL gets some reasonable number of hits including kit for sale. Good luck.

The other place to look is in IEEE or ACM library resources. Chances are once you know the book title you can get it via inter library loan.

Regards, Martin Brown

Thanks, Martin... I did a patent search and sure enough came up with the HIL patent. It did help some, but to do what I need will require more information. At least this is a start. Jim

There is some information in here:

Chris