[Techtoolslist] Fluke 9110FT SPECTRUM-TX diskettes imaged

Wed Jan 10 03:20:58 EST 2018

Just want to add that I did a quick test installation on a VM and it seemed to install correctly when I started SETUP.EXE from the diskette prior to loading Windows.

/Martin!

-----Original Message-----
From: Techtoolslist [mailto:techtoolslist-bounces at flippers.com] On Behalf Of Ian Eure
Sent: den 9 januari 2018 16:07
To: Technical Tools Mail List <techtoolslist at flippers.com>
Subject: Re: [Techtoolslist] Fluke 9110FT SPECTRUM-TX diskettes imaged

Following up on this.  I tried setting everything up, and got some promising signs, but haven’t been able to get it fully working.  I’m dumping what I figured out in the hopes that someone else can give it a shot, or come up with some suggestions for me to try.

The only 9100 with GPIB I have with actually is a 9110FT, which is perfect for this -- there shouldn’t be any issues due to using the wrong mainframe.

First thing I did is set up GPIB on it.  This process is kind of a hassle.

1. Boot a service disk, select CONFIGURE, and make sure IEEE is
   enabled.  Power cycle the mainframe.
2. Install the IEEE-411 feature disk.  Use the COPY function, selecing
   DR1 as the source and HDR as the destination.
3. Go into the setup menu, pick ON BOOT, select IEEE, select ENABLED.
   Hit ENTER/YES.
4. Make sure a pod is connected, then power-cycle the mainframe.
5. Go into SETUP, press MORE SOFTKEYS, and there should be a new IEEE
   softkey.  Configure it like the SPECTRUM-TX readme.txt says:
   address 3, talker/listener, no terminator.
6. Install the SPECTRUM-TX software the same way as the feature disk,
   with COPY.
7. Run TS_INIT.  From the operator’s keypad, press EXEC.  If there’s a
   UUT name filled out, press CONT to erase it -- this selects PROGLIB
   instead of a UUT directory program.  Then press HELP, select
   TS_INIT, accept the default arguments, and hit ENTER/YES.  This
   initializes SPECTRUM-TX for the attached pod.  If you change pods,
   you need to repeat this process.
8. Run TS_CLIFF, the same way as TS_INIT.  The 9100 should say "Under
   PC Control (9110TX Ver. 1.0)".

That’s it for the 9100 end of things.

Since I don’t have another 9100 with GPIB, I don’t know if this works on a 9100 or 9105.  I tried it on a 9100A just to see what happened, but it didn’t work.  TS_INIT did its thing, but running TS_CLIFF errored with an "option not installed" message.  I assume this is just referring to the GPIB interface, but I can’t confirm.

On the PC end, I used a rackmount Pentium MMX 233mhz machine.  This is the only PC I have with ISA slots. It’s a 233mhz Pentium MMX, and normally runs plain MS-DOS 6.22.  I installed Windows for Workgroups
3.11 so I could try this out.

I bought a National Instruments GPIB-PCII/IIA, because it seems to be supported and was the cheapest I could find on eBay ($22 shipped).
The driver for this (and many other NI GPIBs) is called "NI-488.2", and version 2.6 supports Windows 3.  They still host it on their website, along with nice PDF manuals, so kudos to them.

The NI driver package includes a hardware self-test, which I verified was passing (after moving some other hardware around so I could allocate it an IRQ).

After that, I installed SPECTRUM-TX.  The installer is goofy.  There are two programs, one called SETUP.EXE, for DOS, and one WSETUP.EXE for Windows. SETUP.EXE entirely doesn’t work, but WSETUP.EXE only mostly doesn’t work.  They both copy a very few files to the hard disk;  WSETUP also creates Program Manager icons for SPECTRUM-TX, but they all point to files on the floppy disk.  I ran WSETUP.EXE, then copied everything from the floppy into the install directory and updated the Program Manager entries to point there.

Okay, so all that done, cable connected, I ran TS_CLIFF on the Fluke and SPECTRUM-TX on the PC.

Unfortunately, the Windows program says it can’t communicate with the Fluke.  When you launch the Windows program, the Fluke display changes to "REMOTE CONTROL IN PROGRESS" -- so it received the right command from the PC.  And when you hit the OK button on the PC, the Fluke resets back to the main display, so it’s got to be receiving something from the PC telling it to do that.  They’re definitely talking, but something isn’t right from the PC’s perspective.

Here’s what I was seeing: https://imgur.com/a/yEKmR

Maybe it’s supposed to run off the floppy and messing around with file locations broke things?  I figured this was something I could try, so I deleted the SPECTRUM-TX stuff off the hard disk and tried installing again, but WSETUP.EXE crashes now.  I guess the Windows installation is balled up, but I don’t have the time to reinstall it and start over again tonight.

Maybe it actually only works with an AT-GPIB card?

Maybe there’s a delay loop which no longer works, because it runs 10x faster than it’s supposed to?

  -- Ian

Martin Olsson writes:

> Hi all!
>
> I bought a Fluke 9110FT setup and with that setup came the SPECTRUM-TX diskettes which I now have imaged and uploaded to the "/TTL/Test_Equipment/Fluke/9100 Series" folder on John's FTP site.
>
> Inside the ZIP archive is a ReadMe with more details about the images etc. I haven't tested the images myself but I think they should probably work as the original diskettes was error free.
>
> Enjoy!
>
>
> /Martin!
> _______________________________________________
> Techtoolslist mailing list
> Techtoolslist at flippers.com
> https://pairlist7.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/techtoolslist
> FTP site is: ftp://ttl.arcadetech.org/TTL/Test_Equipment
> Archive site: http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/techtoolslist/

_______________________________________________
Techtoolslist mailing list
Techtoolslist at flippers.com
https://pairlist7.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/techtoolslist
FTP site is: ftp://ttl.arcadetech.org/TTL/Test_Equipment
Archive site: http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/techtoolslist/