On Thu, 2012-08-16 at 16:31 -0400, Kent A. Reed wrote:
> On 8/16/2012 11:37 AM, Ray Mitchell wrote:
> > GPIB also had a ridiculously short cable length (and expensive to boot).
> 
> That's true and it seemed we always needed one more cable than we could 
> lay our hands on when my group was using GPIB aka IEEE 488 aka HP-IB 
> extensively (into the early 1980s). Fortunately, there was always 
> somebody down the hall to borrow one from.
> 
> On the other hand, why beat on a dead horse? HP-IB was developed by HP 
> back in the 1960s-1970s to interconnect its growing line of 
> instrumentation products with digital interfaces. IEEE got into the act 
> in the 1970s. The HP-IB bus was implemented in TTL. Given that, I think 
> the usable cable lengths were pretty impressive.
> 
> We took a ton of data on HP 98xx desktop computers bussed to HP 
> instruments; processed and plotted results to HP plotters. (Anyone 
> remember those funky magnetic program cards? I wish I had kept one for a 
> souvenir. Indeed, I wish I had kept one of every kind of data storage 
> medium I used in my professional lifetime.)
> 
> This technology wasn't my choice---I had joined the group with extensive 
> experience in minicompter/NIM-bin/CAMAC technologies---but taking the HP 
> approach meant the engineers could do their own integration. At least 
> two students won PhDs from their home universities with research based 
> in part on the data they gathered in our group.
> 
> Sic transit gloria mundi.
> 
> Regards,
> Kent
> 
Oh! My, My. aren't memories fun. We used a HP9815 as a storage
device/printer for the Atomic Absorbtion system. Tape stored the binary
to reload the PDP-11 and the printer recorded the results. I suspect
that was fairly good implementation for the era. :-)

D
IIRC HP-IB was good for 2 m between instruments. 
> 
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