First, I want to thank everyone who's responded so far; you've really
helped get me started on this project. I'm really impressed with the 3000
community here for taking the time out to help a tinkerer.

I got the parts list from the fax-back service (thanks for that tip!) and
have id'd all of the pieces in my machine. I'm waiting for a couple of
HP-IB cables so I can get my drives hooked up and see if there's anything
on them to boot. I am a little worried, though, since the machine came
from the accounting department at Canon films - it may very well be wiped
clean. If not, I'll tell you what Chuck Norris got paid for all those bad
movies...

One thing I can't seem to get is anything to my terminal. Too many ports,
too little experience; where exactly should I connect? On one kind
member's advice, I downloaded a freeware HP terminal emulator. I
understand how the ports are wired (DTE vs DCE), so I connected a
straight-through cable from the DB25F on the TIC of the top (CPU) cabinet
straight to com 1 on my PC. But all I seem to get are characters like "fX"
or "aX aX aX", which appear after each cycle of characters on the front
panel display. The front panel goes through a sequence like this on
power-on:

5....B....C.... (maybe 10 seconds on each character)  after which it
flashes through a sequence like this, four times each character, with a
pause after the last and then a repeat:

CCCC....EEEE....5555

After repeating the flashing character sequence 4 times, it goes back to
the original 5....B....C....

I also tried using Port 0 of the ATP connectors attached to the same TIC
board, using a scope to figure out the pinout, and got an identical
result as using the modem cable on the DB25F.

Any ideas as to what's going on? Are these error codes flashing on there?

Thanks again,

Aaron