If you use pyILPER for the first time, please read this document to get pyILPER up and running.
The pyILPER user interface consists of the following main components:
The File menu contains functions to configure pyILPER. First of all, the pyILPER configuration menu entry is important. Use the Quit entry to exit the program.
The Utilities menu includes features that support working with pyILPER.
The Help menu provides menu entries for the online help system and some technical and legal information
The virtual devices of pyILPER are contained in separate labeled pages. Click the corresponding tab of the device to bring the display and controls of the device to the foreground.
The undock button allows you to detach the display and controls from the main user interface and view them in a separate window. You can move this "floating" window to any location on the desktop, including to a separate monitor. If you close a "floating" window, it is re-attached to the main user interface again.
The pyILPER main window and the "floating" windows can be resized by clicking and dragging edges. The number of lines of scope, terminal, printer, or plotter output will increase or decrease accordingly. This is necessary for "floating" windows, because they start with a minimum window size. The size and position of the windows are saved and restored when pyILPER restarts.
In this chapter you'll learn what basic settings you need to configure to use the program.
Run pyILPER configuration from the File menu.
pyILPER stores all log files in a working directory. The default of that directory is the user's home directory. Change the pyILPER working directory to an appropriate location.
Set the Papersize for plotter and PDF output.
Check PIL-Box in the Communication configuration section (this should be enabled by default). Connect the PIL-Box to your computer and select or enter the tty device of the PIL-Box.
On Linux, the device name is usually /dev/ttyUSBn. Check if you have read and write access to the device. Some Linux distributions require membership of the dialout group to access the device.
On Windows, the device is COMn. If you are uncertain, check the COM ports in the device manager.
On macOS the device name is usually /dev/cu.usbserial-FTDxxxx.
pyILPER tries to determine the baud rate of the PIL-BOX serial device. If that does not work, set the baud rate manually to the baud rate the PIL-Box is configured to. See the PIL-Box documentation for further details.
To use the file management capabilities of the virtual drives or the HP7470A plotter, the latest version of the LIFUTILS must be installed. After installation of the LIFUTILS, restart pyILPER and use Check LIFUTILS Installation from the "Utilities" menu if a LIFUTILS version was detected by pyILPER.
If you start pyILPER for the first time, you get a graphical user interface with some menu entries and a tab for several virtual HP-IL devices:
You'll need to take additional steps if you want to use the terminal's keyboard.
There are other virtual HP-IL devices, which are not available in the default configuration:
The Virtual HP-IL Device configuration entry in the File menu allows you to add, remove, or reorder virtual HP-IL device tabs.
You must check the "Device enabled" box on each tab to put it into the virtual HP-IL loop of pyILPER. The order of the tabs specifies the order of the devices in the loop.
Disabling a device does not break the loop. It only removes the device out of the loop.
Note: you must always (re)initialize the loop if you enable or disable a device:
RESET HPIL @ RESTORE IO @ CLEARASSIGN IO.The Virtual HP-IL device status entry in the Utilities menu shows, which devices are active, and which HP-IL addresses are assigned to them.
Note: The drive tab has controls that are only active if the device is disabled!
Some devices support logging, e.g., of HP-IL frames, print output, or plot commands. This output is always written to a file in the pyILPER working directory. The name of the log file consists of the name of the device tab followed by the extension .log. Each time logging is enabled, the output is appended to the existing file. The start of each new output is marked by a timestamp.
Some devices allow you to save a print or plot output as a PDF file. The PDF output is used to generate a print or plot output that closely resembles the output from the original device. Direct printing to a printer is not supported.
pyILPER supports virtual HP-IL over TCP/IP. You may connect the HP-71B Emulator of Christoph Gießelink or the HP-41 Emulator V41 (available at www.hp41.org - a registration is required to access the software) with pyILPER.
Run pyILPER configuration from the File menu to set the pyILPER TCP/IP configuration.
Change the communication mode to TCP/IP. Check if the TCP/IP configuration parameters (remote host, remote port, local port) are configured properly. See the documentation of the virtual HP-IL over TCP/IP and the documentation of EMU71 or V41 for further details.
Emu71 includes remote keyboard support. See the Terminal Tab documentation on how to set it up.
The recommended procedure to connect Emu71 to pyILPER is:
The recommended procedure to disconnect Emu71 from pyILPER is:
The HP-41, HP-71 and HP-75 emulators of J. F. Garnier can be attached to pyILPER if they are executed on DOSBox.
You need the DOSBox version 0.74-2 or later. Other versions will not work.
Install the DOSBox software and apply the following change to the serial section of the DOSBox configuration file:
serial1=nullmodem server:localhost port:59999 transparent:1 txdelay:0
See the DOSBox documentation on how to locate the configuration file.
Install your favorite EMUxx emulator(s) on DOSBox.
Modify the INI file of the emulator. Remove all devices you do not need to be emulated by the EMUxx program. Insert the device:
XIL COM1
Run pyILPER configuration from the File menu to set the TCP-IP socket server (PIL-Box emulator) configuration.
Change the communication configuration to TCP/IP socket server (PIL-Box emulator).
Start pyILPER. You should see the message "waiting for client" in the status bar. Start DOSBox. The pyILPER status line should now say "client connected". Now start the EMUxx program on DOSBox.
Note:
If you would like to use pyILPER stand-alone without connection to a real or emulated calculator, set up the program to use virtual HP-IL over TCP/IP (see above). Then you can use the virtual drive to manage the content of LIF image files.