Hi, Jeff

Thanks for the Info.

1. There are h/w and s/w pieces to HPIB, and there are no more HPIB cards
being sold TODAY.  You need HPIB cards to have HPIB devices, regardless of
what you do to the s/w portion of HPIB.

2. MPE/iX 6.5 supports large memory (and also large files), but the large
memory part matters re. HPIB.  The current HPIB drivers do not support
large memory (>= 4 GB).  The effort to modify the HPIB drivers to support
large memory is very large :}

3. Release 6.5 has new and complex-to-use APIs that would be very
challenging
to reverse engineer, and time consuming for us to explain/support, but any
updated HPIB driver will need to interface with these APIs -- sorry I forgot
the details here.

4. After 6.5, the entire IO systems uses PCI (rather than CIO) and all bets
are
off for HPIB.

That's the best explanation I have for thinking this is not a good Shared
Source project.  I think I do understand the desire for extending the life
of HPIB, but I think that will be too difficult and expensive to do.

too difficult and expensive to do.


Few Decades Ago, IIRC, Before the Series 33, the HP-IB(IEEE-488) won't be available in the HP 3000 system.

It only available on the HP1000 system, but a salesman sold a HPIB with the  HP3000 III, for a competitive bid for the DEC. 

We manage the project to implement a HP264X terminal to emulate HP-IB between D/A A/D converter to HP3000.

"INVENT" mean something?

Just for though

Peter Chong
Sr. ERP/MRP Analyst.
L3 Communications
714.956.9200 x 363
http://www.powerparagon.com