HP9826 - HP 9000 Series 200
At one place I worked, we used a HP 9826 (HP 9000 Series 200) for instrument control. It was the controller for an automated testsystem for communication equipment. I can no longer remember if it was a HP9826, a HP9816 or some other model, but that doesn't matter. The machine ran basic, and all the test programs were written in basic too. Unfortunately, they were "secured" so that when you listed the program, you would only see line numbers followed by an asterisk. This made it very hard for us technicians to modify and improve the test programs. Luckily, I found the program that they had used to secure the programs with, and modified it so that it could unsecure any Basic program.
back to my computing history page.
Links
github bug400/lifutils,
History:
2010-07-17: I downloaded HPDir, installed it on a machine with a internal floppy (and running WinXP), and then I tried to read a floppy I have which is marked (in my handrwriting) "HPBASIC Instrument" and "OTHELLO".
C:\WINDOWS>\diverse\utils\hpdir\hpdir -info 0: Info: FDC sense: Windows NT/2000/XP/VISTA detected Info: FDC sense: 82077 controller detected Info: FDC get drives: drive 0 = DS/DD 3.5" (720k) Info: FDC get drives: drive 1 = not installed Info: FDC get drives: drive 2 = not installed Info: FDC get drives: drive 3 = not installed Info: FDC autodetect: LIF 3.5 DS/DD found. -- Floppy drive info -- Media type: LIF 3.5 DS/DD Media capacity: 616 bytes Number of cylinders: 77 Number of heads: 2 Sectors per track: 16 Sector size: 256 -- File system info -- Image format: Logical Interchange Format (LIF) id=$1000 version=1 Image size: 630784 bytes Volume label: "INT:" Creation date & time: 21-Apr-90 12:44 Sectors per track: 16 Number of heads or surfaces: 2 Total number of user accessable tracks: 154 Total number of user accessable records: 2464 System area starts at record #0 Directory starts at record #2 Directory size: 32 records File area starts at record #34 Total number of system tracks: 3 Total number of usable data tracks: 151 500736 bytes of 618496 free. C:\WINDOWS>
Success! A listing:
C:\download\temp>\diverse\utils\hpdir\hpdir -list 0: SYS FILE NUMBER RECORD MODIFIED PUB OPEN FILE NAME LEV TYPE TYPE RECORDS LENGTH DATE TIME ACC STAT ===================== === ==== ===== ======== ======== =============== === ==== IBASIC_LD 1 98X6 BDAT 9 2 21-Apr-90 12:44 W AVER_SRQ 1 98X6 ASCII 9 256 21-Apr-90 12:44 DISCR_SWP 1 98X6 ASCII 39 256 21-Apr-90 12:44 DL_PROG 1 98X6 ASCII 4 256 21-Apr-90 12:44 DTXFRA 1 98X6 ASCII 5 256 21-Apr-90 12:44 DTXFRB 1 98X6 ASCII 10 256 21-Apr-90 12:44 INT_NOISE 1 98X6 ASCII 13 256 21-Apr-90 12:45 LOG_XAXIS 1 98X6 ASCII 24 256 21-Apr-90 12:45 MOVE_STATE 1 98X6 ASCII 10 256 21-Apr-90 12:45 OPCQ_SYNC 1 98X6 ASCII 5 256 21-Apr-90 12:45 OPC_SYNC 1 98X6 ASCII 8 256 21-Apr-90 12:45 OTHELLO 1 98X6 ASCII 69 256 21-Apr-90 12:46 PARTITIONS 1 98X6 ASCII 14 256 21-Apr-90 12:46 PLOT_CTRL 1 98X6 ASCII 9 256 21-Apr-90 12:46 RANGE_SRQ 1 98X6 ASCII 7 256 21-Apr-90 12:46 REVID 1 98X6 ASCII 1 256 21-Apr-90 12:47 SHAPE 1 98X6 ASCII 16 256 21-Apr-90 12:47 SHELLBEGIN 1 98X6 ASCII 4 256 21-Apr-90 12:47 SHELLCHAIN 1 98X6 ASCII 1 256 21-Apr-90 12:47 SHELLDEMO 1 98X6 ASCII 2 256 21-Apr-90 12:47 SHELLEND 1 98X6 ASCII 3 256 21-Apr-90 12:47 SPOOLER 1 98X6 ASCII 21 256 21-Apr-90 12:48 THD 1 98X6 ASCII 10 256 21-Apr-90 12:48 THREE_DB 1 98X6 ASCII 28 256 21-Apr-90 12:48 TRC_LOAD 1 98X6 ASCII 14 256 21-Apr-90 12:48 TRC_UTILS 1 98X6 ASCII 16 256 21-Apr-90 12:48 TWO_CTLR 1 98X6 ASCII 13 256 21-Apr-90 12:49 UPLOAD88 1 98X6 ASCII 6 256 21-Apr-90 12:49 WAI_SYNC 1 98X6 ASCII 6 256 21-Apr-90 12:49 HPIB_CHECK 1 98X6 PROG 5 128 08-Nov-91 12:41 OTHELLO2 1 98X6 ASCII 69 256 28-Aug-91 14:25 GPIB 1 98X6 PROG 3 128 30-<?>-91 09:59 GPIB_2 1 98X6 PROG 4 128 08-Nov-91 16:03 504064 of 618496 bytes free.
Nice. I have extracted all the files (using the hpdir -extract command), and placed them in a zip file here: hpbasic_int.zip.
2008-08-18: I stumbled across lif_utils (LIF Utilities for linux) which might be useful. The HP98x6 we used had 3.5 inch floppies, perhaps a 9121 drive or something like that.
1985-11-22: November 22nd, 1985. Here is a PDF document of the program (I no longer have any machine readable copy, so I just scanned a printout). Requirements: HP 9826 or HP 9836 with Basic 2.0 (or perhaps later)
Usage:
LOADSUB ALL FROM "UNSECURE" END UNSECURE END DELSUB UNSECURE END
This unsecures the whole program. If you just want to unsecure a range of line numbers, use UNSECURE(A, B), where A is starting line number and B is ending line number