Win, did you receive the reply I made to your enquiry? I replied almost by return (it was OK) but had no news/acknowledge since then. If not I'll resend it. Simply just tell me which one of your numerous email address is valid :-)
-- Thanks, Fred.
I'm sorry, Fred, yes I did get your email answer. As long as you're "going public" with the issue, this is a good opportunity to invite our s.e.d. friends in on the discussion. I've been in accumulation mode with hp 4145A and 4145B semiconductor parameter analyzers up for auction on eBay, looking for a good one. Along the way, I offered you one of the 4145A analyzers I won over your 2nd bid, at a good price. Here's where I/we stand now.
First, something that's not obvious from studying their manuals, I've learned that neither the 4145A nor the 4145B will operate from their front panels if they are missing the program disks, which is the case for most of these analyzers offered on eBay. Perhaps you knew this already? Users can make backups of 4145B 3.5" LIF-format disks using the machine, but there appears to be no way to make copies of proprietary 4145A 5.25" low-density disks. Nonetheless, at least I now have both 4145A and 4145B disks, which should allow me to test these instruments from their front panels.
Second, I'm unsure if one can operate these instruments from a computer using HPIB, even if the disks are missing. It appears that one might be able to do so, which could rescue a diskless 4145A instrument from the scrap pile. Does anyone here know?
Third, the manuals are poorly written, and fail to teach one how to completely use the instruments and their disk programs. This means I've been unable to determine yet if any of my machines are properly functional. For example, the 4145A gives me a buffer overflow if I try for more than one plot on a screen. The 4145B does multiple curves, but it won't show me the softkeys to run the Marker and do basic calculations. Ditto for the 4145A. In both cases the instruments fail to present the results the manuals suggest they should.
I'm struggling with not knowing if I correctly understand how to run the machines, or if they are working properly.
--
Thanks,
- Win
In message , dated Fri, 4 Aug
2006, Fred Bartoli writesI'd like to know that, too. I want to ask him something, but I lost what might have been a valid address in a virus attack.
-- OOO - Own Opinions Only. Try www.jmwa.demon.co.uk and www.isce.org.uk 2006 is YMMVI- Your mileage may vary immensely. John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK
I'm sorry, my basic email address is just hill atsign rowland periodthingie org in the usual way.
--
Thanks,
- Win
I have a 4145B that I got off our corporate surplus list about 10 years ago, and have been very happy with. Those things are bulletproof,
*EXCEPT* for the floppy drive.That stupid floppy drive is the Achilles heel of the whole system. As you say, the box is brain-dead without its boot floppy--you can't even run the front panel. It's just like a 1981 PC.
Compounding this are three aggravating factors:
On the plus side, if you have the boot disc, you can often resuscitate the drive by cleaning the head carefully.
Cheers,
Phil Hobbs
Our *three* weapons are: nonstandard interface, no spares, AND a nonstandard data format, AND nice red uniforms...Oh, for heaven's sake.
Cheers,
Phil Hobbs
In message , dated Fri, 4 Aug 2006, Winfield Hill writes
Thank you. E-mail follows.
-- OOO - Own Opinions Only. Try www.jmwa.demon.co.uk and www.isce.org.uk 2006 is YMMVI- Your mileage may vary immensely. John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK
John,
Speaking of re-connecting...
How did your TANH compressor ideas turn out?
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Isn't he busy working on the next edition?
Michael
In message , dated Fri, 4 Aug 2006, Jim Thompson writes
Not too well; I couldn't get the distortion down low enough. It's a long story, but basically the instantaneous compressor was part of a two-stage signal processor and the second stage proved too expensive as well, so - not even CLOSE to a cigar!
-- OOO - Own Opinions Only. Try www.jmwa.demon.co.uk and www.isce.org.uk 2006 is YMMVI- Your mileage may vary immensely. John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK
Yep, I knew that the analysers require a boot disk. I'm unable to find it now but IIRC there's an appnote (or something else) on Agilent website that I saw a few weeks ago, where they say that you can ask for a CD with all those boot stuff for several instruments. I guess there's the small utility to format the disks too. OTOH, if you have the disks, you might be able to copy them on a PC with rawrite or rawrite2 (maybe).
I've also found this on agilent website (googling LIF floppy disk):
Don't know if that works, but if it did I wouldn't mind receiving an image file :-) It'll save me the trouble of searching for those floppies.
Don't know, but my guess is that if all the machines boot with no error message, then that's probably something you've overlooked somewhere.
-- Thanks, Fred.
3.5" floppy disks for the 4145B are or must be readily available because SFAIK users can make full backup copies on the machine, even using standard 1.44M floppies. But the 4145A does not format or make disk copies of its 5.25" disks and HP explicitly said the machine couldn't and they had to be ordered from HP in packets of 5 disks (p/n 16261A). Note, the way HP used the 5.25" floppies they had 92k capacity, compared to 360k for low-density disks.
I've asked around, and looked around, and there seems to be no hint of how to copy an 4145A disk. Maybe some old low-density game-machine sector-copying setup, but the controller would have to be programmed with HP's exact weird track and sector rules, etc.
That's for the 4145B machine, and reading their disk info into a DOS computer. As for making the disks, supposedly the 4145B can do that just fine, so that problem is solved.
Does anyone know the answer to this question? Maybe someone on sci.engr.semiconductors? One reader has written me to say his 4145A will NOT respond to HPIB commands without a floppy.
--
Thanks,
- Win
You could try and find a early 90's vintage MS-DOS shareware utility called ANADISK, (and a mid-90's computer to run it on). It can read and copy anything the 765 floppy chip can deal with. I think Steve Walz has a zipfile in his archive.
Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)
I did have this problem a bit ago. I either used Copyiipc or a hardware copyboard. I had both on an old dos PC with 5-1/4" diskettes. I still have the PC but I don't know if the copyboard is still around. Copyiipc attempts to determine the track/sector scheme and replicate it using the standard PC hardware. The copyboard was more of a bit copy function. We have since retired most of the 4145's but I may still have a couple diskettes around.
Sorry I missed the start of the thread. Are you still looking to make copies?
Bart
Does that include floppy chips like WD's FD1791 and Fujitsu's MB8866? All three IC datasheets mention the IBM 3740 single- density format (FM), as well as double-density (MFM), etc.
I also have an original-era IBM PC with a 5/25" disk drive. The original oldest 5.25" floppy format I remember was 360k, but the hp 4145A disks are only 92k. Whew! Was there something before IBM's entrance that would be helpful, and old Osborne or Kaypro DOS machine, etc., with an older floppy technology? Wikipedia says the Kaypro II had single-sided, 191 kB 5¼ inch drives. For floppy-disk formats, they say the first hard-sectored format, in 1978, had 35 tracks, 48 tpi and about 90 kB capacity. Bingo? Note, 35 tracks was increased to 40, and 48 tpi single-density was doubled by the time 5.25" drives appeared in early Commodore and Kaypro computers, etc.
BTW, the disk drive in one of my 4145As is a Canon MDD6106, which Goggle doesn't recognize.
Fred wrote to say: I've looked in more details at the 4145A operating manual (available at Agilent's website). In "checks and adjustments" (page 5-26) about the floppy disk, they say it's a 40 tracks, 9 sectors, 256 bytes per sector format, which is 92160 bytes.
But this doesn't tally well with some information available on the MB8866 controller, where they spell the number of sectors per track to be 8/15/26. Plus, with the track preamble, synchronization gaps, and additional sector info, this doesn't tally too with the 125kbps /5r/s = 25kb per track.
There's still some mysteries, but I'm making progress.
Yes.
--
Thanks,
- Win
Just one of the rather unusual things about LIF disks is that they tended to use UNIX standard 256 byte sectors versus the IBM-PC 512 byte sectors.
-- JosephKK Gegen dummheit kampfen die Gotter Selbst, vergebens. --Schiller
In message , dated Fri, 4 Aug 2006, Winfield Hill writes
This is probably excessively naive, but could an Apple II minimalist drive be used, with suitable software? It's probably far from trivial to write the software, but compared with simulating an unobtainable FDC chip...
-- OOO - Own Opinions Only. Try www.jmwa.demon.co.uk and www.isce.org.uk 2006 is YMMVI- Your mileage may vary immensely. John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK
A 9816 or 9826 could copy those discs too. There's a Linux utility called (iirc) HPDISK that I've never tried...enough 4145Bs are still in use in my building that we just use those.
Cheers,
Phil Hobbs
The Catweazel floppy controller might be able to do the job - it handles all kinds of strange floppy formats (for example, it can read and write C64 and Mac floppy disks on normal drives):
cu Michael
-- Some people have no respect of age unless it is bottled.
How well it will do a single density disk will depend on the floppy disk controller card. Some of the later multi-funcition controller chips didn't guarentee that FM/Single Densisty would work. Might take a bit of controller board swapping. I'd guess that a real IBM PC/AT controller would be able to do it.
There were CPM -> MSDOS conversion programs that could read the old single density formats on PCs, so some of the hardware would work. (The Author of ANADISK had one of those, too.)
IBM did also have a 160kbyte disk format.
Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)
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