HP 82324 HPIB Card (HyperViper)

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

I have several HP Vectra computers that control HP test equipment via
HPIB. Each of these computers has an HP 82324 HPIB card installed.
The HP 82324 actually appears to consist of three cards wired together
via ribbon cables. Two of the cards have an HPIB connector and the
third card has a DB-25 connector.

These cards may contain a co-processor and RAM and may be referred to
as a "HyperViper" card but I don't know for sure. My goal is to
replace them and the computers in which they reside with modern
computer hardware. But before I attempt this, I need more information.

Can anyone tell where I can obtain information on the HP 82324? A
manual would be very helpful.

Lyman

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

Thanks for the info Frank. I believe HP Basic and RMB are now being
supported by TransEra [ http://www.htbasic.com/newprod.html ]. I
contacted several dealers in manuals in my search for information on
the HP 82324 but have had no luck so far. I recently learned that the
82324 actually has RMB stored within it and so can process HPIB
commands quite efficiently. It has been suggested I download the RMB
firmware from the 82324 as a text file and run it on a modern PC with a
modern HPIB card (e.g. National GPIO) using software from TransEra.
Will be giving that idea some thought.

Some other site, I forget which, refers to the Viper and HyperViper
cards but provides little iformation on them other than implying the
Viper is less capable than the Hyper Viper.

Lyman

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

Radra <radra@adelphia.net> wrote:
> I have several HP Vectra computers that control HP test equipment via
> HPIB. Each of these computers has an HP 82324 HPIB card installed.
> The HP 82324 actually appears to consist of three cards wired together
> via ribbon cables. Two of the cards have an HPIB connector and the
> third card has a DB-25 connector.
>
> These cards may contain a co-processor and RAM and may be referred to
> as a "HyperViper" card but I don't know for sure. My goal is to
> replace them and the computers in which they reside with modern
> computer hardware. But before I attempt this, I need more information.
>
> Can anyone tell where I can obtain information on the HP 82324? A
> manual would be very helpful.
>
> Lyman

Since you got no (posted) responses sofar: I'll try to help a little.

The card is probably called a "Viper" card ("HyperViper" doesn't ring
a bell). The Viper card was an *extra* (Motorola 68000 CPU based)
*computer* which could be plugged *in* a (IBM-compatible) PC, i.e. a
computer in a computer.

I did a quick Google Groups search on "Viper HP RMB" in these HP
groups (comp.sys.hp.*) and got a few hits. I used "RMB" to limit the
possibly meaningless results. "RMB" stands for "Rocky Mountain BASIC",
which was the BASIC language system often used in these systems. OTOH,
there are many other 'synonyms' for RMB, so you may want to try some
other searches as well.

IIRC, there is a company which sells (sold?) a (software) RMB 'clone'
for 'modern' (IBM-compatible) PCs, but I can't recall the name.

I have never used/supported these systems, but some of my
ex-colleagues have. If you find no other clues, I can try to contact
them, but realize that this is all *very old* and very obsolete stuff,
at least as far as HP is concerned. IIRC, the support for these products
went to the Agilent company when that part was split-off from HP. So
also search the Agilent web-site, Google Groups with "Agilent" instead
of "HP", etc..

BTW finding an electronic copy of a manual would be unlikely because
this stuff predates the web by many years.

I hope this helps.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

I have one of these cards in a computer I inherited at work.
Unfortunately, I lost another computer that had an ISA GBIP card in it,
and I would like to try using the Viper card in its place. That one
interfaced a compiled Turbo Pascal program with a test stand. I am
wondering if there is any way for that executable to communicate with the
GPIB port (or can only RMB use the port?). I am not terribly familiar
with this protocol. Thanks!

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

jpatters wrote:
> I have one of these cards in a computer I inherited at work.
> Unfortunately, I lost another computer that had an ISA GBIP card in it,
> and I would like to try using the Viper card in its place. That one
> interfaced a compiled Turbo Pascal program with a test stand. I am
> wondering if there is any way for that executable to communicate with the
> GPIB port (or can only RMB use the port?). I am not terribly familiar
> with this protocol. Thanks!
>

I'm sure that only RMB could use that port. The ribbon cables are the
old DIO backplane from Series 200 machines. The co-processor card can
load programs stored on the PC's disk, but it talks to the GPIB card(s)
over the ribbon cables.

From what you describe, trying to port an application to the Viper
would not be a good choice. You should be thinking about a PCI-GPIB
card in a newer machine. HP originally had I/O libraries called SICL
for communicating with interfaces like that, and have generally moved
to VISA as a more industry-standard solution. If you have source, then
the application could be ported. If you don't have source, then trying
to find another identical card is about your only hope.

-Dave