From: John H Meyers on
On Sun, 26 Aug 2007 19:57:02 -0500, Michael Heinz wrote:

> The HP48gx uses a non-standard serial port to communicate.

What (aside from the connector) is non-standard?

The "HP48 I/O Technical Interfacing Guide" (48techni.pdf)
contains complete specs, including a pinout diagram
for the original Mac serial connector
(didn't I once see Mac cables being sold,
for Macs which had serial I/O and serial printer ports?)

Although serial specs may suggest output of 5v or more,
receiver input sensitivity is supposed to be 3v minimum
(the HP48 itself would respond to 1v),
and the designed HP48 nominal output levels were 3.5v,
which seem to be within universal specs, aren't they?

"Voltages of -3v to -25v with respect to signal ground
are considered logic '1' (the marking condition), whereas
voltages of +3v to +25v are considered logic '0' (the spacing condition).
The range of voltages between -3v and +3v is considered
a transition region, for which a signal state is not assigned."
http://www.camiresearch.com/Data_Com_Basics/RS232_standard.html#anchor1181440

Also http://www.rs485.com/rs485spec.html [includes RS232]

The HP48 also works with any standard Kermit-supporting communications program
(for ascii and binary file transfer) and XModem (binary only).

Various HP48 I/O documents (including 82240B IR printer):

Low-tech versions:
http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/misc/io2.txt
http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/programming/ioguide.zip

PDFs (thanks to Cary McCallister of HP)
http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/programming/48techni.zip
http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/programming/82240bte.zip

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From: Bruce Horrocks on
Michael Heinz wrote:

> Rich - what backwards compatibility? HP has never supported their
> calculators on the Mac, and the Mac hasn't had RS-232 ports for at
> least ten years.

If we're being pedantic then the Mac has *never* had RS232 ports. It did
once have RS423 ports though.

Regards,

--
Bruce Horrocks
Surrey
England
(bruce at scorecrow dot com)
From: TranslucentAmoebae on
On Aug 27, 10:45 am, Raymond Wiker <r...(a)RawMBP.local> wrote:
> richwood <astronut1...(a)yahoo.com> writes:
> > On Aug 27, 10:10 am, Michael Heinz <ObviousTr...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Aug 26, 11:53 pm, richwood <astronut1...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> > Sorry to hear of the Mac program compatibility problem as I thought
> >> > they had tried to preserve backwards compatibility. That is a
> >> > difficult task though when the computer system has used three or so
> >> > entirely incompatible processor families over the years.
>
> >> > Rich W
>
> >> Rich - what backwards compatibility? HP has never supported their
> >> calculators on the Mac, and the Mac hasn't had RS-232 ports for at
> >> least ten years. Until I wrote HPConnect in 2004 Mac users of HP
> >> calculators were completely out of luck. I chose to only support HP's
> >> USB models because, frankly, that's what I owned at the time. I had
> >> owned an HP48G previously, but a coworker talked me out of it.
>
> > My error. I have never owned a Mac but remember reading years ago
> > that the operating system included emulators for the older processors
> > so that old programs could be run, even is somewhat slowly, on later
> > Macs. Apparently with the latest operating system version this is no
> > longer true. It may have never been true for drivers and programs
> > which handled hardware.
>
> Apple has actually been quite good at supporting previous versions:
>
> - The PowerPC processors could emulate the 68K family
> processors they replaced.
>
> - The first versions of Mac OS X could run OS (System)? 9 programs
>
> - The current HW (Intel Core Duo processors) can run programs compiled
> for PowerPC processors - in some cases, at a higher speed than what
> the original HW was capable of.
>
> Note that this covers 2 changes to completely different processor
> architecture, and 1 change to a completely different OS architecture.
>
> As far as HP48 support goes, it should be relatively easy to get it
> running under Mac OS X. You'll need one of those USB-to-Serial
> adapters, but you can get one of those for less than 10 these days. I
> got one made by "Manhattan", and have used it with Minicom to verify
> that I can talk to my HP48GX from my Mac.

What would be the step by step instructions for this...???
i would need the cable, that i can buy from "Manhattan"...???
and then the big problem would be find a communications program that
runs on OSX...???
???

From: TranslucentAmoebae on
On Aug 27, 1:33 pm, "John H Meyers" <jhmey...(a)nomail.invalid> wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Aug 2007 19:57:02 -0500, Michael Heinz wrote:
> > The HP48gx uses a non-standard serial port to communicate.
>
> What (aside from the connector) is non-standard?
>
> The "HP48 I/O Technical Interfacing Guide" (48techni.pdf)
> contains complete specs, including a pinout diagram
> for the original Mac serial connector
> (didn't I once see Mac cables being sold,
> for Macs which had serial I/O and serial printer ports?)
>
> Although serial specs may suggest output of 5v or more,
> receiver input sensitivity is supposed to be 3v minimum
> (the HP48 itself would respond to 1v),
> and the designed HP48 nominal output levels were 3.5v,
> which seem to be within universal specs, aren't they?
>
> "Voltages of -3v to -25v with respect to signal ground
> are considered logic '1' (the marking condition), whereas
> voltages of +3v to +25v are considered logic '0' (the spacing condition).
> The range of voltages between -3v and +3v is considered
> a transition region, for which a signal state is not assigned."http://www.camiresearch.com/Data_Com_Basics/RS232_standard.html#ancho...
>
> Alsohttp://www.rs485.com/rs485spec.html[includes RS232]
>
> The HP48 also works with any standard Kermit-supporting communications program
> (for ascii and binary file transfer) and XModem (binary only).
>
> Various HP48 I/O documents (including 82240B IR printer):
>
> Low-tech versions:http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/misc/io2.txthttp://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/programming/ioguide.zip
>
> PDFs (thanks to Cary McCallister of HP)http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/programming/48techni.ziphttp://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/programming/82240bte.zip
>
> [r->] [OFF]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek...!!!
This is much to complicated for my tiny brain...!!!
What i really need is for someone in the know, who has a Mac with OSX
and an HP48 AND can connect them...
To simply post the step by step instructions...???
!!!
i could well imagine though, that i am the first hamster to encounter
this problem,
in which case, i may finally be pushed into getting a 49 or 50...!!!
ugh.
They can communicate easily to mac's can't they, either directly, or
by proxy, via an SD Card...
( is that the same thing as the digital camera cards...??? )
ack and ack...??? [ !!! }
thanx!

From: John H Meyers on
On Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:22:11 -0500, TA wrote:

> SD Card... ( is that the same thing as the digital camera cards...??? )

Lots of digital cameras can use SD cards, and where I live,
SD cards are now available only in my Wal-Mart "photo" section.

But xD "Picture Card" does not appear compatible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XD-Picture_Card

If SD was developed for music DRM,
how come players that can use SDs have vanished?
(because people can swap their SD cards with each other?)

http://www.intco.biz/technology/memory-cards.htm

Is anyone using MicroSD (with adaptor) for calc?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroSD

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