[Techtoolslist] Fluke 9110FT SPECTRUM-TX diskettes imaged

[John Robertson]

On 2018/01/27 6:03 p.m., Ian Eure wrote:
> Following up again, I got it working tonight.  As I suspected, it
> worked on a slower machine, so it’s got some sort of badly written
> timing loop.  Maybe someone can figure out where it is and patch it so
> it will work on newer machines.  It works on a 486DX2-66mhz at full
> speed, and doesn’t work on a Pentium-MMX 233mhz.
>
> Couple notes for those trying to replicate this.
>
> If you’re using an 8-bit GPIB, you can’t use DMA, or you can’t use
> Windows 386 Enhanced mode.  I’m not sure if this limitation is from
> Windows, the hardware, SPECTRUM-TX, or some combination of them.  The
> NI drivers install a control panel item, if you go in there, you can
> set the DMA channel to "none" -- and set up the SPECTRUM-TX
> configuration the same way.  Or you might want to get a 16-bit card
> instead.
>
> I’ve been able to use WSETUP.EXE before, but it wouldn’t do anything
> but GPF for me this time around.  I think it does that if you install
> the NI software before SPECTRUM-TX.  I used SETUP.EXE instead, and it
> works much better, it actually copies the files to the HDD.  You have
> to run it from DOS, not inside Windows.  It launches Windows to finish
> the install.
>
> I tried to take some screenshots, but they ended up cropped for some
> reason.  I’ll try again soon.  Here’s a photo of it running:
> https://imgur.com/e2lUspM
>
> Mostly, this lets you do the same things as you can from the operator
> keyboard.  Maybe it was more convenient to use a PC for this in 1991,
> but since you need such an old machine for it to work, I’m not sure
> how useful it is in 2018.
>
> It has some intriguing features which I’d like to dig into more.  One
> is "sequence file," which seems to let you upload a series of commands
> from the PC to run on the mainframe.  I’m not sure if this is just
> scripting the SPECTRUM-TX commands or what.
>
> The other thing is that you can send TL/1 statements from the PC and
> get the return value back.  That’s interesting, because normally you’d
> need the programmer station option to run TL/1 code.  And even if you
> do, this is something that’s impossible from inside a TL/1 program.
> Figuring out how this works is potentially interesting for writing
> non-TL/1 programs for the 9100 (ex. in C or C++).
>
>    -- Ian

Did you ever get any further with this Ian? 5 years isn't long on TTL - 
I was thinking of poking at the Spectrum-TX but not so sure now that it 
is worth the time after reading your notes...

Thanks!

John :-#)#

>
>
> Ian Eure writes:
>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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!

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