HP 9825 Repair Part 15: Running original HP test equipment checkout software
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- čas přidán 12. 06. 2022
- We recover original HP program tapes for our HP 9825 and run them to test our vintage HP equipment. Now the HP 9825 is really coming to life, and the result is quite impressive. Mr. Fancy Pants would be proud.
HP 9825 repair playlist: • HP 9825 Repair
Recovered software available on my website software section:
www.curiousmarc.com/doc-archi...
Previous HP mini-cartridge tape videos:
Tape drives restoration: • Vintage HP Mini Cartri...
Tape cartridges restoration: • Vintage HP Mini Cartri...
Previous restoration videos of HP equipment shown here:
HP 9825 computer: • HP 9825T Repair Part 1...
HP 3325 function gen: • HP 3325A Frequency Syn...
HP 8662 microwave synthesizer: • HP 8662A synthesized s...
HP 8568 spectrum analyzer: • HP 8568B 1.5 GHz Spect...
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Too cool, I love the onscreen instructions on the spectrum analyzer
Me too! I was so surprised when I saw it, even though I expected something to be drawn from the obtuse code. After all, the spectrum analyzer display is a high res programmable vector display, so if you put the time in, it can be done, painfully. It’s so well done!
I once imagined that could be done as but hadn’t seen it being done before. Very cool
Imagine seeing this when the machine was new. It's no wonder these things were so expensive!
This was so amazing seeing all the HP's work together, testing calibration and interfacing with each other. This was freaking cool!!! Thank you Marc!
Ha! What an image... a giant stack of HP test gear, pieces of Apollo lying around, empty glasses, a stack of fanfold paper, IEEE488 cables everywhere - takes me back :)
Mr Fancy Pants and his colleagues put the "self test" concept to a mindblowing level. You know you're watching serious business when test equipments needs their own siblings to test other test equipment, all instrumented by a 16 bit computer disguised as a calculator. "Do test equipment dreams of testing test equipment?"
I'd be a bit afraid in digging in these tapes, maybe one of them is a long forgotten self sentient AI global automated test project that may go rogue and ask for a vengeance for having being trapped in a cassette for so much time. Hopefully it won't have access to radio broadcasting hardware that may allow it to get in control of cold war era ICBM fleets worldwide. Hopefully.
Oh no they better hide the Apollo radio equipment then!
@@brucesheplan696 "oops".
Testception...
Unless Marc plugs in one of the dozen Real Time Clock modules he's fixed, the AI won't even know how much time has passed.
I love how it uses the spectrum analyzer to display graphics when testing
The star at the end was kind of adorable!
The only thing cooler than fancy measurement equipment is watching a fully automated measurement setup.
Seeing a text adventure printed in 16 character lines on that paper tape was hilarious. Thanks for showcasing that.
Oldtimey HP lab gear was just straight up amazing. What a sorry wispy shadow of its former towering past the company is now.
Hi. Having repaired various tape units in the past one of the commonest problems I had was the head/track alignment. Without a good factory alignment tape it can be difficult and worse, many of the tapes you will have will be recorded on out of spec machines. You will commonly find these tapes can be read easily, but only on the machine that recorded them! I had some "ediview" powder (originally used when editing 2" Ampex videotape with a razor blade ...) which allowed me to look at the actual track position on the tapes and spot the massively out of spec ones and adjust the read heads to match.
If you don't have some, try and find some ediview! Its an incredibly fine powdered magnetic stainless steel ... applied to the tape mixed with a little isopropanol and you can easily see the track position. Invaluable for diagnosing many difficult to read tapes!!
There's a safer little device which does the same thing without putting anything on the tape.
@@Mrshoujo There is, but it is not very sensitive with low coercivity tapes. We used to use ediview on tapes that would do on to be played in 2" Ampex "Quad" machines, with high speed video heads ... and they were fine. Compared to the slow speed tape drive, that's a much more demanding enviroment. At one time, this is how all video editing was done!
Thanks, you confirm my suspicion why the tape output is low. ALso wonder if there is an azimuth adjustment on these type of tape drives? Definately would try to fix the mechanical alignement before cranking up the gain - although just for backing up the data the bauty of digital is as long as its read error free its as good as new.
Reminds me of the “click of death” from old Zip Drives. Out of alignment head would write Zip disk out of alignment. Problem was, stick that disk in another drive, the drive would hammer the head around to try to read the data, and proceed to screw up it’s alignment, at which point it would start writing bad disks. Hilarious unintentional hardware “virus”.
@@radiohirsch It could not read its own tapes. This was not an alignment problem at all. There is no alignment adjustment, it has only two very wide tracks. The issue was mostly tape media degradation, and to a lesser degree some head wear.
Wow, good job! I built my first ATE using an HP 9825 in 1983. I'm still building ATEs, and we still use the 488 bus because our Metrology group (calibration) still use it for controlling their instruments (more old HP and Fluke primary standards). Good stuff!
Absolute amazing work! Your attention to detail and dedication at MAX levels, passing verification test 100% ⭐
I was very impressed with repairing the tape unit but that 8662A verification was something else. Great to see these old machines all working perfectly.
I remember using the 9825. We interfaced balances, scintillation counters, which were used in chemical analysis. The HPL programming language was very easy to use and very powerful. This was back in the 70's and 80's. I am getting old :)
The venerable low noise OP-27 to the rescue! Thank you for taking us all down memory lane once again.
Good times! Can relate when i was using Nintendo Game Cube with backup CDs and adjusting lazer power to pickup signal enough to lock on tracking. The digital world is an abstraction... its the waves dude.
Used to have to do this with Dreamcast too. I haven't done that in a while.
You are in a twisty maze of passages, all different. Very nice work!
My experience is that if you use a heat gun on lowest temperature and heat the drive belt just a little bit it will not pull off the oxide of the tape when you then remove the drive belt. The drive-belt might leave a little bit of sticky residue on the tape which then could be cleaned by gently rubbing with a Q-tip dipped in isopropanol. I recovered heaps of DECtape II / TU58 (which is the DEC variant of DC100) in this way.
please pin this comment!
I used some IPA on a DECtape and ended up with clear tape.
That's another great episode of "Back To The Future"! I have quite some old hp gear, and in most of their manuals there were listings or references to HP9825 test programs in BASIC. Big Thanks for demonstrating how this was intended to work.
It's amazing to follow along as you fix/repair/test each device, and now you see them all work together to verify and confirm everything is "in spec" as a whole suite. And that little "star" on the oscilloscope saying "passed" is the cherry on to. Amazing the amount of integration that was engineered in from the get go.
What a gorgeous ecosystem when you realize that the calculator is just the top of the cake to automate powerfull test equipment
I really like how much love the developper put in the software. Like the star at the success display. Early software has so small things that are not really needed but other "nerds" would appreciate it. That chanced in the 90th when software really got mainstream. But even today i have to do it if i have the time.
I am as impressed as Mr. FancyPants 👏🏻 Great you were able to recover and save those tapes and see the programs run was the cherry on the cake. I guess you are very proud having this collection of great equipment restored and calibrated yourself and that's well deserved. 👍🏻
Awesome to see it working, and that you are creating backups of the tapes.
Man, You are amazing! Watching your videos before sleep is exciting and calming at once. I like so much how you are really preserving the history, preventing all these machines and code and accesories from vanishing! 👍 I only just feel a bit embarassed then with my x86 PC machines collection..so simple compared to what you do 🥴 But still, doing my best too to keep those alive and save them from the scrap too.
I remember running these tests as a student sales engineer in an HP sales office in the UK. Simply wonderful to watch this!!!
We almost never used the tape drive, pretty much everything was on the 8 inch dual floppy drives. We also had an RS-232 display that was only a serial listing device, one could not scroll around the display, so the single line LED display was still some use. I think I recall you mentioning that display or something similar in a previous video. Too bad you don not seem to have found an HP 9826, we really did not look back once the 9826 came out. RMB rocked!
Man, the idea of an analog output for a terminal is really interesting to me. My first thought was creating a controller to interface with an electronic keyboard and having it output that way, but my inner environmentalist isn't appreciating that abundant waste of paper... but imagine a dot-matrix printer feeding straight into a recycle bin or paper shredder
I love the efforts in preservation. Thank you!
"Mr fancy pants"... cracks me up every time 😂
This is just like Harry's Garage in that that the enthusiasm when finding changes is the same. I just watched Harry being delighted finding out he had other cylinder heads on his Porsche. Here it is the discovery of a factory repair change of op amp😁
Then venn diagram of HG and CM subscribers must be rather small; I also just watched the same video onthe 930!
I too watch both channels…although not religiously.
@@ztifbob is always great to see nice and knowledgeable people talk about their craft. I don't watch every video as soon as they come up, but eventually I've gone through most. It's nice to watch nice content😁
@@coffeecodecameras they have so many similarities IMO. Nice, calm, very knowledgeable, sound, good at explaining (Marc wins that tho by being grea at it), enthusiastic about their interest without shouting "AWESOME DUDE!" every other sentence 😁
It also helps that I am a electronics AND a car geek😁
I would buy a T-shirt with that "VICTORY" Star on a scope CRT :D
Nicely done Sir. you deserve a pair of fancy pants yourself! you've earnt em! I'd like to see Marc in his own pair of 70's flare pants! I could actually see him pulling the look off.
Damn this gear is neat. I have had some experience with some higher end RF test gear, which I thought were old, but both of the units were all in one machines. and I only learnt how to use them for the specific tests the shop I was working at used. didnt stop me from experimenting during lunch breaks. the first bit of HP kit of this era I used was basically a bench supply, but had so many extra buttons and lights I NEVER touched, but after watching quite a bit of Mr CuriousMarc recognise why it needed a big data connector. I also didnt understand why my boss spent so much on a PSU. no doubt it was beautiful, but with the right combo of computer and analyser kit, you could rig it to test just about near damn anything. I am now 100% sure my boss bought it not cos we needed a PSU with 5 decimal place accuracy, but that he wanted a piece of that era HP gear he could justify as a tax rightoff. and fair cop to.
I have mad respect for data archivists, digital, paper and stone, and all in between. now the machine is working, I look forward to what other UberNerds send your way.
when I started computing at about 9 in the mid 90's, I got gifted a very early laptop that was considered junk and dead. I hotwired a powersupply, got it booting, but didnt have a PC that could read the discs (not that there were many i had). I knew the drive worked cos I could read the included discs on it, but none of my 'modern' machines would read them.
I had a foreboding feeling about the amount of information that just might evaporate if the machine broke, and how much data might be on obsolete systems. this was pre-internet in my neck of the woods, and didnt think there would be nerds out there with this level of dedication.
I did actually get the thing quasi-useful after a while, once i figured out how to pipe data to it via serial (one of the few included discs was a terminal program, it had a serial port, I had a soldering iron, a good technical library closeish and parents willing to put money on my photocopy card). also an uncle with a stack of old software, but all archived on 'regular' 1.44mb discs. I dont think they were standard 720k discs, cos they wouldnt read on my uncles machine either, or maybe his drive was just bunky. I did make it work, and ended up with a rather usable DOS 3 machine. not that it was that useful, as at that stage I had Doom on my main PC. I killed a month of sundays faffing about with that thing tho.
one (IRL) game I played with my parents was 'moonbase'. set up a bunch of kit outside my bedroom, shut the door with cables running out, Would only talk to them via the 'RTTY'. Dads old dot matrix printer (he had a decent pentium and bubblejet) and that lappy with a cable running under the door to the kitchen. they had to schedule a communication (so I could save my game and open the serial port), else I would ignore em, even if they yelled thru the door (BYAAK BYAAK BYAAK etc; goes the dot matrix; severe radeo interfereance, try the rtty). Mum freaked a bit initially, but Dad got the game and played along. this was post Columbia pre internet. I knew BBS's n RTTY existed, but had no way to engage. but I could make my own kinda thing with a few dumb programs and batch scripts.
then I got a copy of warcraft 2, n with that same hardware we could multiplayer games, that freaked mum out again next level. stone quiet for 3 hours, then yells of vitriol and wrath as we murdered each other with glee. but what if we had 3 players?? Life never was the same again. I picked up better hardware, I was the only house that actually had ethernet, so when deathmatch became a thing... not only did I have the hardware for it, but my folks were kinda prepped for it. I dont know, but im kinda sure my mum gave a heads up that 'Screams at 3AM are quite normal... no, its not quite like playing nintendo, they are rather more enthusiastic. No, No, never had a bloody nose. quite civll for such a loud fight. they do take it quite seriously.' mad props to my mum, she recognised we never fought with fists (not at home anyway). Boys will fight. we fought with stats, resources, later, shots to the face.
Ahem, i seem no not be on topic
You guys have the best job. look forward to more of your adventures
It's is so important to do this with tapes before they become to degraded to revover you are doing a service by archiving these
After all the work to get it operating, seeing it do its actual job is fantastic. Thanks for sharing this!
Ok, now I see why HP owned that market in its day. Speaking as one that works for a former HP company, what happened to them.
So cool to see both the inner workings and the machines at work like they used to run!
This was way more fun to watch than it should be, seeing it take control and perform the tests at speed like that was super interesting and surprising to see how they communicate with each other!
This is a very nice video. I am very curious about computers like this and it is nice to see you examine and demonstrate its uses. 😁
Great video as always, Marc!
I am impressed Marc; this was very entertaining.
Very impressive advanced and automated testing level for that age. The world now has 2 Mr. fancy pants. Your videos are very instructional. Thanks.
You had me at Mr Fancy Pants. May Jonathan Coulton be proud of you! And you win the Mr 9825 parade!
Any time you can recover data from tape media and save it on easily copyable storage is a good time.
I enjoy the combination of mechanical and electrical problem-solving seen here!
Different test equipment testing each other via computer control. So cool.
marc you are a mastermind!!
8:06 I've only ever seen OP-27's in the old ceramic package. They make for absolutely wonderful fuzz/overdrive boxes for guitar. I generally like at least a 47pF compensation cap to keep the slew rate down.
Another excellent video....
Persistence pays off.
So cool! Congrats on getting the tape drive running, I have vivid memories of the hassle using those drives on Sparc II systems and the poor reliability. Love to see the 3455A featured, I have a 3456A that I picked up in the mid 2000's and for around $120 it was the cheapest and most accurate way I could get a 6.5 digit meter at the time. It was only a few years out of calibration, and I doubt much has changed since it is only used very rarely, and quite briefly at that. It's too bad it only reads volts and ohms, though with a full numeric keypad and 3 operator calculations you could definitely measure current in a pinch. As it's full rack-sized unit it's a bit unwieldy, but it definitely works well and I think the 7 segment LED readout beats the early LCD meters HP made... The contrast, especially on such old models, is pretty awful compared to LEDs.
+1 on the beautifully legible LEDs vs the unreadable LCDs that were used afterwards!
This is the best part of my day.
A genius at work that's all I can say!
You are crazy. Thank you for this content.
Finaly I can see this computer be used for something
I wonder if it could also control something, (some radio or electronic lock, or a relay maybe) or maybe control a modern computer (as a remote keyboard for instance)
Nice work!
Those HP engineers were some very clever folk. I am gob smacked! 🤯
Id love to have this much insight... well done
Keep rolling the code forward!
Fantastic!
Original Thinkjet. Very nice!
Still got one of those drives around, used to be the backup drive when everything fitted on a single tape, and the hard drive on the server was a whole gigabyte....
With half of it free space, and the upgraded drive was the smallest one around, a 10G drive, jumpered to limit it to 4G for the old Novell netware, so I made an extra partition on it of 3G that I could use. End of it's life the log showed it rolled over power on days, and the last logged in user for that length of time had been me, doing a weekly check on it.
I aint no Fancy Pants but I'm still impressed. Good work!
TWENTY TWO MINUTES LATER ! -- Starts to watch video again... :-)
as a younger person i did not even know that such "old" instruments had the capability of an automated test.
Good Job!
Good grief Curious Mark. That awesome. Thank you.
That reminds me of earlier this year when I dumped a rare DECO Cassette System arcade machine game. The tape drive was stuttering and failing, but running it outside the machine on a higher speed worked fine and I recorded the signal on my laptop, I did four passes. I couldn't find an FM decoder online so I had to write my own. Three of the four passes got the same binary and it worked.
Respected, long time ago (around 1995) the service I was working at a time had to repair the bigger brother of these tape units (don't remember egzact model), and I clearly remember that my older coleges at a time solved rotten rubber drive by using some roller from VCR, cut at height on lathe (it was brought already cutted, but we sended roller). It has been many years since, and VCRs are a thing of a past, but it is my humble opinion that it would be much more stable and less "flutter" or how it is called. Best Regards, and thanks for all the videos very much.
Good work. Very nice 👍
Hey Marc, you should do a video about your life and your story. Seeing the video form Keysight where it touched on it briefly, I’d sit down for a whole hour of you going through your background.
I really do not know where you get the time...
Nice demo :)
Cheers,
Good job
Oh man, those tapes... A few years ago when I was still new to collecting those things, I found an HP4951 Protocol Analyzer locally, even came with a few tapes! It booted up and all, and I found a "Terminal Emulator" cartridge, was wondering if it could allow me to use the HP4951B as a dumb terminal for a Raspberry for example, but the tape in and it just ate it, still have bad memories of that...
This is a great video - thanks Marc. Its particularly relevant as I'm getting close to completing my repair of an HP 8662A that I acquired (literally) in pieces. I'd love to run those tests using my HP85 and my HP8568A spec. Will you be making the recovered programs available for download?
Yes, they will be made available.
@@CuriousMarc I'm sure the Internet Archive would be happy to host them.
Big memory rush there…I had forgotten about Adventure, which I last played circa 1980.
The HP 9825 was impressive before but now seeing how it can control all the other HP stuff (yea I never touched anything like this so its all alien to me so its potential is hard to judge) it becomes more clear how powerful this thing could be in the right hands.
HP 9825 = The Force Multiplier!
Something hit me tough, can you use a terminal (no keyboard just monitor) to substitute the small built in printer, saving paper and making life easier? Should fit on top of It I would think.
Maybe there even was a unit for that, so I guess my question is any plans for a CRT monitor as a printer/terminal instead of the small tape?
We finally replaced our HP 9825 controlled system with a PLC controlled system. The project wrapped up this week! I suspect the functional 9825s that were removed were tossed in the dumpster :(
Perish the thought!
Zork would be so cool on this computer.
Another episode on the HP 9825 :)
well done, awsome 👍🇸🇪
Marc! It’s great to see this series culminate by actually using the 9825 to test your other vintage gear. On a side note, do you have an opinion on where HP got the inspiration for the “green box” logo for the new HP Enterprise division? I think the proportions look very similar to the 9825 tapes. Or is there another piece of vintage HP equipment that has the same proportions as the green box? Please measure everything in your lab and make an episode on this. 😝
Check out this video of Marc with Daniel from Keysight czcams.com/video/qwocVH3_1Eo/video.html
I was curious Marc, can this also be done with an 85A or B? Love the video series on this, I binge watched it over two days. I never earned my degree in Electronics or Programming, but I worked in the Aviation side of Electronics for 20 years in the U.S. Navy and then another 22 years fixing Aircraft Test Sets, including reverse engineering and Test Set Fixtures and Procedures to Test, Isolate and Repair those Test Sets. Loved that job and my fellow technicians. However I had to retire two years ago to take care of my dad, who has since passed. So I was looking into setting up a hobby home lab to enjoy retirement doing pretty much what you and your friends have been doing. Again absolutely LOVE the channel and fun. Best Wishes & Blessings. Keith Noneya
Absolutely. The test programs were ported to the 85 and I have a whole collection of tapes that I need to recover.
awesome! all i want to say
The 9825 was used by HP not only for electronic test and measurement equipment, but also as a controller for some of HP's chemical analysis gear. Specifically I can remember the HP 5992 benchtop GC/MS being controlled by the 9825.
Even better. It was used in many of HP’s production tests. The HP 8662A test tape is so thorough that I am tempted to think it was adapted from production testing. Would be nice if an old timer could confirm or debunk this.
@@CuriousMarc Very hard to confirm or debunk this. Does the tape have a part number? If so, it may be referenced in the 8662A service manual as part of a performance verification test. In any case, it may well be that test tapes used in the factory were also used at HP's bench service facilities. Although I worked in an HP office alongside a bench repair facility, I was part of the Analytical Group, so I can't offer any real evidence either way.
Non-HP-Person here so I zoned out a bit. Then I mis-heard "recovering software from 1925" and did a massive double-take.
12:30 I would hit a let's play. I have an old HP DDS4 and I am using it for weekly backups. Super fun little thing. But my problems are a loose spring at most, nothing serious.
Marc, did you get to use this type of equipment early in your career?
It's got to be a great feeling to have your home lab so well outfitted!
Incredible.... Greetings from Paraguay🇵🇾... 73 de ZP9ALE
Love seeing some tape action, it reminds me when I used LTOs, off topic, do you do anything to keep the Solari clock in top shape? Just an idea for a vid
Top youtube content )
Might be usefull to directly capture the magnetic flux of the tape for archival purposes
19:01 The sound of the tape reading ... Is this the sound of Muthur in the movie Alien ?
Cool...
I would love to see a playthrough of Adventure! How many paper rolls would it use?!
You can get good, long lasting rubber on that capstan, but you have to take it out of the machine. Once out, you can have it machined down by a small amount, grooved for grip, and then cast around it in a 3d printed form, a medium durometer rubber. Have done this with old machines before. On average, you can expect 5+ years of good life out of them, and that was back in the mid 00's, we have much better compounds now.
Now I see why... Impressive. ps I imagine the "elevator music" is titled "Can't you take a joke?'.
ooo someone should make it do an amateur radio mode with that signal generator.
perhaps one of WSJT’s modes?
Try Terrys rubber wheels for the capstan. He is the go to guy for reel to reel pinch roller. Maybe he can help you out. I’m sending him the pinch roller from my hp 3964a.
Terry’s rubber rollers. He is da man!