Hi Jan

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You say? Is there sufficient added value to a tool like this over merely swapping modules in order to get things to work?

Is this related to the firmware of the 70900 not supporting the modules you have installed ?

Or is this to fault find a bad module / unit

?

Best regards Paul

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Dear all,

While building my 3rd hp70k-mms system, I want to assess the interest in a project idea I've had for the past two years or so: A sniffer/injector for the hp70k module-interconnection protocol (msib). All (hardware/software) open source; this is not a commercial proposal (apart from e.g. cost-price PCB delivery).

The very rough basic idea is to take a single-width hp70k module (likely, for-parts-only), strip everything inside apart from the msib interface and mechanical interfaces, and put inside one or more PCBs that:

• Interface with the msib bus such that 'basic bus transactions' can be captured;
• Store these 'transactions' into (e.g.) a pcap file on an ssd connected to a (say) an embedded Raspberry Pi;
• Transfer these 'transactions' over 1 Gbps Ethernet (copper/Fiber Optic) from the Raspberry Pi;
• Interface over Ethernet both from the front and the rear;
• Import the pcap 'transaction' into Wireshark (on a remote machine);
• Interpret the 'transactions' using an hp70k-msib dissector;
• Perhaps add power monitoring, etc.;
• ...

This would be the basic first-order requirements of the project. In subsequent phases, injection of messages/transactions on the bus and running HP calibration (HP-BASIC) software from virtualized containers could be implemented.

My questions:

• Is any project already working on something like this that I can join (I could not find any)?
• Would this be interesting enough to the amateur hp70k community? Is there sufficient added value to a tool like this over merely swapping modules in order to get things to work?
• Does a tool like this have the potential to increase the public knowledge on the hp70k mms? Could it reveal calibration data? Is it worth it?
• Would anyone be willing to help? I figure that even a first attempt at a working prototype would take over a year, but various components of the project (like the pcap format definition, wireshark dissectors, web-based interfacing, RPi firmware, KiCAD PCB design of bus interfacing, ...) could be isolated and designed/implemented in a team-effort... Needless to say this project would required >=4 committed enthusiast aficionados...

Thanks in advance for your thoughts/vision on this, BR,
Jan - pa3gyf

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