IEEE488 Interface

[BeebMaster]

I've decided to have a play about with my IEEE488 kit, I've got three cheese wedges, a metal box variety (possibly a unique home-made casing using the insides of an Acorn one after looking at it more closely this afternoon) an an Aries B488.

I've got further than ever before today thanks to downloading the manual from Chris's Acorns, but there is a limit to what I can do as I haven't got any IEEEEE4888 devices. What is the chance of me being able to pick up something I could use for a couple of bob?

This looked exciting, but possibly a bit pricey:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nicolet-Model ... 2c5fd887b7

[flynnjs]

Is this more in your price range?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Agilent-34 ... 19cbf42ea9
There will be lots of test gear on ebay that doesn't actually state that it
has IEEE488/GPIB/HPIB on it, but does

You could also connect 3 beebs together if each beeb has a different
GPIB address. How about IEEE488 net filing system and server project?

Interestingly, I found someone just up the road to me selling brand new
IEEE488 cheese wedges and brought one myself. It was potentially
cheaper to get one of those and something to transfer captured data
from the beeb onto a PC than buying a PC GPIB card!

[RobC]

Interestingly, I found someone just up the road to me selling brand new IEEE488 cheese wedges and brought one myself. It was potentially cheaper to get one of those and something to transfer captured data from the beeb onto a PC than buying a PC GPIB card!

Do you know if any of these are still available? I'd love to get my hands on one!

Cheers,

Rob

[BeebMaster]

I like the idea of connecting up a couple of Beebs via IEEE488, you can set the device ID with the "BBC DEVICE NO" command. The trouble is I haven't got any IEEE leads!

I think it's unlikely that I'll be able to get an IEEE488 device, couldn't really justify any expenditure over a tenner just to make a BeebMaster picture set!

On a technical point: is there anybody out there who has successfully used the IEEE OSWORD call (&80)? I was trying that out but all I get is an "Out of range" error each time. According to the manual (which in this section at least is written in very un-Acorny terms) the command block at X%Y% is:

" first byte - number of bytes in argument
second byte - number of bytes in reply
third byte - command code
subsequent bytes - determined by first three bytes"

To send the BBC DEVICE NO command, which is code &40 and takes 1 byte in the argument to send the number, I should be able to do:

?osbl=1
osbl?1=0
osbl?2=&40
osbl?3=7 (recommended device no)

but as soon as I CALL&FFF1 I get "Out of range". The form of this OSWORD command block isn't what I'm used to. I know it's not SCSI or something like that, but I would have expected the control block to point to a data area for receiving a reply, and have the first byte set to zero to receive the completion code. Any ideas?

[flynnjs]

I've not really done anything with mine other than unbox it
so I'm no expert. IIRC in the box there was a ROM. Does
the ROM handle the OSWORD and do you have it installed?

[BeebMaster]

Yes - the OSWORD call is provided by the IEEE FS ROM, which is installed. I've got IEEEFS version 0.05 and it doesn't seem to do very much. There are no * commands in the ROM apart from *IEEE. The only way to communicate with the IEEE wedge is by an odd system of opening a channel called "COMMAND" with OPENIN and PRINT#ing commands to it and reading the replies with INPUT#.

I've also got a ROM image of NIEEE 0.2, which is written by Intelligent Interfaces, but I haven't got it to do anything at all yet (it's possibly corrupt though as it's only 8K and appears to end rather abruptly in the middle of some BASIC Assembler text).

The IEEE kit came with another ROM marked IEEE 1.98 which is by Procyon Research but I just get "Interface power off or unplugged" error after trying *IEEE. This ROM appears to support its own definition of *OPT commands from 0 to 10 to control the interface behaviour according to the HELP but since it doesn't detect the Acorn wedge (or Aries B488) it must be for some other piece of kit.

So I think I'm stuck for now!

[flynnjs]

Do you want me to post you my Acorn wedge and a lead so you can try two back to back? I can probably loan you a piece of test equipment too but it would have to wait until a f2f because I'm sure the IEEE488 standard mandates all equipment to be over 25kg

Tomorrow, I'll go and see what else is in the box such as documentation and see what version the ROM is.

[BeebMaster]

Loan of a lead would be great, I've got a silly amount of IEEE kit - 3 Acorn wedges, a fourth one in a metal box and an Aries B488, so there's enough here for me to connect together, which will save on postage!

I'm not ruling out having an IEEE lead, I'll check my bag of misc leads first, somewhere in here:

[richardtoohey]

Pffff! The bags are labeled - that makes it too easy!

Unless the labels are wrong ... to make it more exciting ...

[BeebMaster]

The labels are correct, but the bags are now all over the place instead of being lined up for a photocall! And there isn't an "IEEE 488 Leads" bag, unfortunately! It could be in "Printer Leads" or "Misc" or similar. And there are also some unlabelled bags, such as "regularly used" or "haven't been re-filed correctly since I finished with" which would have to be eliminated from the search!

[BeebMaster]

Nothing in "printer leads" or "misc". The nearest I got was a Centronics printer extension lead!

[simes]

Have you thought of trying the printer or floppy drives from a Commodore Pet? I beleive they were connected using IEEE488 iirc.

Could be an interesting project.

[BeebMaster]

I think somebody may have mentioned this to me before, thanks for the reminder, I'll have to look into it.

[george.h]

I think I've still got my copy of "PET and the IEEE-488 Interface" book sitting on my shelves. I wonder which would be better, scanning it to PDF (copyright issues over "sharing" such a PDF not withstanding) or offering it to a new home......

[jgharston]

" first byte - number of bytes in argument
second byte - number of bytes in reply
third byte - command code
subsequent bytes - determined by first three bytes"

That's number of bytes in the whole control block

Code: Select all

osbl?0=4   :REM 4 bytes in outward control block
osbl?1=0   :REM 0 bytes in inward control block
osbl?2=&40 :REM Set BBC device number
osbl?3=7   :REM recommended device no

Does your manual not say (p54):

Structure of OSWORD Block
The bytes passed in XY+0 and XY+1 must be the length of the whole control
block, including the length bytes. Consequently, the above arg0 and arg1
values must be increased by 2 before being placed in the control block.

[BeebMaster]

Does your manual not say (p54):

Structure of OSWORD Block
The bytes passed in XY+0 and XY+1 must be the length of the whole control
block, including the length bytes. Consequently, the above arg0 and arg1
values must be increased by 2 before being placed in the control block.

No, it would have been handy if it did! I must have the original; is this one of the corrections you put in?

On the version I have, page 63 has the section "Structure of OSWORD block", but just gives a listing of the commands without the Note at the end of the page.

[simes]

just spotted this if its of interest.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Commodore-PET ... 20c57c65d1

[IBM portable PC]

I'm about to receive a Cambridge Computing Procyon IEEE-488 interface (they made the Acorn unit before selling their own).

Now I'm also wondering what to connect and have noticed Commodore PET floppy drives........... Cambridge even released a ROM containing a CBM (Commodore Business Machines) for this exact purpose, which may/should work with the Acorn wedge also, however I suspect it's lost in time.........

[IBM portable PC]

Okay, so IEEE-488 on a BBC Model B is not exactly mainstream in 2013, however the idea of hooking up equally vintage Commodore PET/128/64/20 drives is interesting......... Well I think so anyway.

The Acorn or Procyon boxes will do it out of the box, both were made by Cambridge Computing, however you need their CBM DFS ROM........

See my post in Wanted http://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewto ... 38c9928023




STOP THE PRESS........ I misread Acorn User mag (Page 159 July 84). The only IEEE-488 interface with a CBM file system was the CST-PROCYON, made by a company of the same name.

[IBM portable PC]

...
The IEEE kit came with another ROM marked IEEE 1.98 which is by Procyon Research but I just get "Interface power off or unplugged" error after trying *IEEE. This ROM appears to support its own definition of *OPT commands from 0 to 10 to control the interface behaviour according to the HELP but since it doesn't detect the Acorn wedge (or Aries B488) it must be for some other piece of kit.
...

I’ve just stumbled across the photo of your ROM here:

http://www.beebmaster.co.uk/CheeseWedge ... 488-5.html

CST made the Procyon IEEE488 interface. It appears the person who supplied you with the AriesB had their ROMS confused.

We have already found a 1.92 ROM, see this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6633&p=197991#p197991

Any chance of a dump of your 1.98 ROM?

[BeebMaster]

Oh right, that's another non-cheese-wedge-cheese-wedge I should be documenting then! Mind you, looks similar, 3 lights on front, power switch, connects to mains...

Seems I imaged the IEEE 1.98 ROM at the time, now attached. It's a 16K file so the image is duplicated in the second half.
***N.B.**** It's called .zip but isn't a zip file, just take off the extension altogether or rename it .rom or whatever. I just did that to fool the forum into allowing me to attach it.****

IEEE1-98.zip

(16 KiB) Downloaded 70 times

[Multiwizard]

Hi Ian,

last year I bought a Acorn IEEE-488 wedge because I wanted to play about a little with my Philips VP412 LD player...

I also (last year) found a little program to control the VP412 through the wedge but it still needs to be typed in and tested...

I did bought a IEEE-488 lead through Aliexpress too...

But because Acorn & other electronics have so much nice things to play with I never came to it (yet)...


Greetings, Wim...

[IBM portable PC]

Oh right, that's another non-cheese-wedge-cheese-wedge I should be documenting then! Mind you, looks similar, 3 lights on front, power switch, connects to mains...

Seems I imaged the IEEE 1.98 ROM at the time, now attached. It's a 16K file so the image is duplicated in the second half.
***N.B.**** It's called .zip but isn't a zip file, just take off the extension altogether or rename it .rom or whatever. I just did that to fool the forum into allowing me to attach it.****

IEEE1-98.zip

Thank you very much, that’s another piece of the Beeb IEEE488 puzzle that was previously lost.

[RobC]

I've just got hold of an Aries B488 interface. Don't know if it's working yet as I've not got any software for it.

From the Acorn User ads I've found, the software apparently came on disk rather ROM - does anyone have a copy?

Thanks,

Rob

[IBM portable PC]

Did anyone ever locate the CST Procyon:

1. Manual.
2. Optional Commodore IEEE-488 floppy drive file system ROM.
3. Libraries for use with the Acorn Z80 and other co-pros.

Interesting that the CST Procyon also supports controlling a beeb remotely via IEEE-488?

RE the Commodore floppy access, I just read this from the ad on page 90 of the January 1984 Acorn User (https://acorn.huininga.nl/pub/magazines ... B_text.pdf:

"The CST PROCYON comes with a highly efficient IEEE filing system, supplied in EPROM, and responds to any high level language, including LISP, FORTRAN. FORTH, APL and BASIC. A specially-written Commodore data-exchange routine, allows you to link your BBC micro to CBM machines and disc drives." i.e. perhaps this support is in the standard ROM...