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I read as many old threads as I could before this. Waded through tons of web pages and some of that is summarized here.

I've installed a 20dB 100 watt attenuator in my 8924C and need to load the matching cal files.

Now, down the rabbit hole... looking for a solution for loading 39 kilobits of calibration data into the 8924C. The files are available here on the forum. For loading in cal data, the 8924C can look at the following locations: external HPIB disk drive, Internal ROM, Internal RAM, external front panel plug in SRAM (or ROM) card. External disk drives are scarce. Unsure how to interface such an old disk drive to a modern PC or how to load the cal files into a HPIB disk drive (or to load into a PCMCIA card). There are some web projects out there to emulate the HPIB disk drives. That's a bigger and deeper rabbit hole.

Memory cards background info - not the same as the slim, 40 pin card as used in the portable instruments such as 85xx series spectrum analyzers or the 892x portable service monitors.. The correct cards for the 8924C are sometimes called "Epson memory cards". Based on a 68 pin 16 bit or 32 bit CardBus interface for PCMCIA cards. Loading data into them can be difficult from current generation computers. Amtronix no longer sells the cards that were part of their 60w and 100w upgrade kits with the attenuator assembly and new front panel sticker.?

I think a CardBus type 1 is 16 bit only and is the slimmer 3mm card. It might be what the HP 16 kB and 64 kB cards use. Cardbus type? 2 is the 5mm card and can use 16 or 32 bit addressing.

A few HP SRAM cards can be found on Ebay for big prices. I don't know if a combination of a "small" 32 Gb Compact Flash card and a CF card to PCMCIA bus adapter might work.

Or maybe somebody out there has cards to sell?

Thanks!

Jim
?

I am still interested in the memory cards but I may have come up with a workaround.

A long time ago, my HP8722C had come with a new HPIB dual 3.5" floppy drive that I had forgotten about. It was still new in the box, stored in the garage. After a lot of reading and trying settings I now have the 8924 talking to the drive and have been able to successfully store and recall the current instrument test states for Rx and Tx.

I've ordered a USB to 3.5" floppy drive on Amazon and hope to have it tomorrow. I plan to put the cal files onto a floppy and then recall them into the 8924.

Jim

CrazyFin & Lorenzo

Thank you very much for your feedback! Here are some of the things that I ran across during my searches.

I did read that dalton.ax page and there are some similar efforts at disk drive emulators such as this Arduino project



There are a number of Arduino based HPIB to USB projects out there. I've seen a few videos but didn't pursue those avenues of thought yet.

This HP Museum page has some useful docs on HP disk drives ?

There are some Epson adapter cards out there which could have flash memory cards or SD cards plugged in. I don't know if the 8924C will be able to properly address such large memory arrays. A number of automobiles used such cards and I also saw that CNC machining systems used PCMCIA cards and used prices on the cards are similarly crazy.

There are groups for the HP85 and HP87 computers that have useful resources for dealing with HPIB and peripherals. My disk drive was made by a Japanese company, ISA Quality Products, Model 1015. It is not HP labeled but is almost identical to some HP dual drives. The HPIB dip switches on the back have no labeling so it was a guessing game to have it set to address 0 to match the 8924C's field for External Disk Specification. I've yet to find if I have the manual somewhere or if it is long gone. Web searches have not yet borne fruit.

From memory, some other HPIB setting notes for the 8924C and a disk drive. On the I/O configure screen initially set MODE to Control and Save/Recall to Disk. Go to the TESTS screen and scroll to the area SET UP TEST SET. Scroll to Cnfg: External Devices.(Select) At the bottom check External Disk Specification to read? ? :,700, 0 ?? as this is having the 8924C look on the HPIB for a peripheral with address set to 0

I have a precious old XP laptop, a Dell Latitude D600 that has the correct PCMCIA slot so I'll have to experiment with programming any cards that I can (if ever) acquire.

A bit more background to what is driving all of this. A friend had said that he had an HP PCMCIA card with the 100W Cal files loaded on it so we attempted to load them and they seemed to go in. However, power readings were off. Eventually I realized that readings were always off by 6dB and slowly realized that his card had a cal file for the 60W 14dB attenuator and not the 20 dB attenuator that I have installed. Yikes. He is afraid to try to modify his card so it leaves me to go to square one and come up with a way to get the proper 20dB file into my 8924C.

One other hiccup. I think in loading his card something with my options has been messed up. A number of weeks back I had set up the 8924C analog screens where I wanted them to initialize at power up and stored those in the POWERON file. Now if I attempt to invoke POWERON manually I get a worrisome message "Options present at Save are missing"

Jim

Here is a talk about replacement options for legacy HP drives ?

Well, I've hit a snag with the disk scheme. I did receive my 3.5" drive with the USB connection. It runs fine on Windows 11 and I was able to drop the Cal files onto the floppy that I was able to store instrument config files into. So all is good with creating floppies to put into the HPIB disk drive.

This is where the fun starts because I knew nothing of HP iBasic before this and am learning on the fly. The attenuator cal files we have are built for storage in and use from the HP SRAM card. Not a deal killer because I am slowly learning what to change to make them compatible with the HPIB disk drive. For instance, I believe the original DwnldCal0.PRC process file needs to be modified or replaced and in the TESTS main menu in the bottom area there is a SAVE/DELETE PROCEDURE tool that I am still figuring out. I'm not sure how else to edit the original PRC so I think a new one has to be created. The DNLDCAL4.PGM file is not even needed. It's used for 8935 and 8285A instruments. The DNLDCAL0.PGM file needs to be modified from calling for the SRAM card to calling the disk. The line looks like this as it defines what memory storage is to be used: ????? MASS STORAGE IS ":INTERNAL,4" ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Replace ":INTERNAL,4"? with ":,700,0" which is the value I mentioned earlier for the disk drive. The value can be found in the TESTS menu at the bottom with the COMMAND entry called Cnfg EXTERNAL DEVICES

Anyone that knows more than I do please chime in!!

Jim

Hi Rab,

thanks for joining in! For my HP859x analyzers I have 2 of the 40 pin Epson cards but alas, no 68 pin SRAM PCMCIA cards.

Just the other day I called Amtronix! I have a friend who bought three of your 60 watt kits for the 8924C about 13 years ago. However,
he had labeled his PCMCIA card as "100 Watt" and that created some confusion when we tried to resurrect one of his older 8924C instruments.
The installed attenuator was actually 14dB and not 20dB so all of our readings were shy by 6dB. Learning about all of details of the upgrade inspired me to have
a go at upgrading my own 8924C.

Jim

From direct personal experience with these things.

1/ As others have said the 8924C (and 8920B) use PCMCIA cards, NOT the Epson cards.

2/ The cards are accessed in "linear" mode ie addressed like RAM or ROM.

3/ They will READ any type of PCMCIA card, but will only WRITE to RAM or SRAM cards.

4/ PCMCIA to SD card adaptors WILL NOT WORK

5/ SOME PCMCIA to CF Adaptors will work but not many. They need to support linear mode, most only work in IDE mode i.e. like? HDD not ROM.

So Best bet is to get a SRAM PCMCIA card. These can written to in just about any PC that has a PCMCIA slot using suitable software. The sofware of choice was the demo version of Elan's "Memory Card Explorer" MCE. Elan have gone out of business but MCE can be found online.

PCMCIA FLASH cards are variable. All linear FLASH cards can be read in a 8924C. However a lot of them require a 12V supply and most laptops and PCMCIA adaptors don't provide this despite it being part of the specification. Identifying what cards need 12V is difficult as detailed datsheets are hard to find. Again you need MCE or similar software.

Robert.

Thanks Robert,

Rab at Amtronix did offer me a lifeline so I'll check in with him tomorrow. Still, making the disk drive work and learning about how the Cal program is written has been fun and educational. I think I've correctly modified the program to access the disk instead of the card but I have an iBasic error with a file name to figure out.

Jim.