MailCall 0x04: Mail from viewers like you!
Added 2019-05-22 17:29:09 +0000 UTCSlight spoiler, I've already assembled the AdLib from this and recorded a video about it. But I don't know how I'm going to edit it because there are some inevitably long parts of soldering with no talking. So I may need to come up with some music for it before I can release it.
Comments
Thanks for the tip! I'll give them a shout out when I'm ready to take a closer look at the plotter.
Tech Tangents
2019-05-22 22:10:13 +0000 UTCPaul Rickards (@paulrickards on Twitter) is a vintage plotter pro and might know more about that HP.
J.R. Williams
2019-05-22 18:25:00 +0000 UTCTo continue, it looks like there are some libplot c libraries referring to the 7221 within BSD archives on github https://github.com/weiss/original-bsd/blob/master/lib/libplot/hp7221/ - the comments mention a piece of software called hp7221cat but I can't find any references to it beyond that comment. It'd be interesting to see how difficult it might be to write a converter between 2d gcode and 7221 binary protocol
Steven S O'Connor
2019-05-22 18:21:39 +0000 UTCregarding the plotter - check out the "operation and programming" manuals listed here http://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?hwdoc=71 In the 7221B-7221S-OperatingAndProgrammingManual-07221-90014-340pages-Aug79.pdf file, it starts on pdf page 93 (in-document page 79), and says you can start with escape sequence "esc . (" to send plotter on command. I could be mistaken but i dont think thats HP-GL
Steven S O'Connor
2019-05-22 18:12:52 +0000 UTC
