HP CAD Digitizer - 9111A Graphics Tablet
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- Still no CAD Software, but wouldn't you believe it that it's actually easier to find CAD hardware for the HP Series 200! Today we're getting very familiar with how the HP 9111A digitizer works, and how I may just write my own CAD software...
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the matte texture on the back of the plastic sheet is so that any paper underneath will show up clearer. using a plastic sheet that's glossy on both sides would cause very subtle viewing issues at certain angles with certain lighting from reflections off of the back surface.
I wonder if the matte finish also would help with gripping the paper underneath to prevent sliding?
I wonder if the pen ever had ink in it, or did they just use an empty pen cartridge because it was familiar, and mass produced and widely available, and at least the tip "rolls"
@@gorak9000 No, the "pen" was the "stylus" emitting a signal that the grid underneath the ceramic could pick up the position signal
Great to see those predecessors of graphics tablets. The earliest I've used were wacom tablets in the mid/late 90s and later Intuos. Now I'm working with cintiqs- what an amazing journey.
I'm 53 and I remember visiting my dad's shipyard in South America back in 1980 (when I was 10) and getting amazed watching a Calcomp CAD/CAM system; it was basically a supersized version of your setup, all scaled up to design, print and manufacture huge metal ship parts.Great video of vintage tech that was cutting edge back in the day.
The part where you walk through the code and modify it was super interesting
THERE. ARE. FOUR. LIGHTS!!!!!!!
You are mistaken... There are five.
Blah, the Cardasians.... Live long and prosper! 🍻🌎❤️🌮🚀
Haha i knew this thread would exist
Meh, PIcard pussed out, he said there were five. He only went back to saying there were four after rescue arrived. 🙄 It's like God with Job; he did crack and only went back to praising him after God got pissed, but God ignored that part that caused him to lose his bet to the Devil and pretended Job didn't crack. 😒
@@I.____.....__...__ not to Gul Madred he didn't. He admitted to Beverley that he wanted to, but ultimately didn't
I commend the HP Engineers' intrepid campaign for a "beep-boop computer" future by placing sound chips and speakers into every device.
24:44 I could be wrong, but it is also possible that BASIC line is immediately tokenized as soon as you hit enter, and the “formatted” looking code is actually result of BASIC interpreting tokens back to human-readable code. Storing BASIC code as tokens instead of text would make sense, given that software of that era had to save as much memory as possible.
I'm a "Tech Designer" (drafter) and I love this old CAD stuff! I got started in the early 2000s, way after digitizer tablets, but worked with a lot of people who used them back in the day over the years. Great stuff, would love to see more.
It was a lot of fun. I got started when I worked at General Electric nuclear energy division in San Jose CA. After using drafting boards for years, they bought the CV (Computer Vision) CAD company. No more drafting boards and VEMCO drafting machines
and messy ink pens ! It was 3D wireframe, using green on green CRT' monitors and vinyl command menus on these pads.
Later on, we switched to CALMA, the CAD system shown in the movie Brainstorm. The last system I used for about ten years was ProEngineer back in 2000, at Spectra-Physics lasers. I wish I had pictures of the room size main-frame computers some of the early systems used. I can only imagine the sophisticated system you're using now !
Yep, the advance of circuit integration technologies had such a huge impact on all our lives! The miniaturisation that we have today, with the average consumer-grade computer system being several orders of magnitude more capable than the most powerful devices huge corporations had only a few decades ago, simply baffles me to this day. The "information age" should really more accurately be referred to as the "computer age"!
Nice. I started using autocad in 1984. I didn't like it too much as I was on a drafting board for 10 years. Now, I love it.
The reason for the pen to have actual ink in it is probably to help seeing what points have been digitized already. The glossy side of the overlay can most likely be cleaned with water after having finished digitizing.
It's crazy how this setup cost over $20000 in '80-'81, but less than 5 years later you could buy an AT with something like AutoCad and a plotter for like 10k, and get better performance and more standardization, not to mention the computer was useful for way more stuff if you wanted.
More standardization is a thing I like to refute. HPIB/GPIB’s versatility and level of standardisation would only be matched by USB in the late 90’s. And HPGL would only be matched when PDF was introduced. And Postscript (what is under PDF’s hood) has some remarkable resemblens to what HP was talking to its printers and plotters.
And since very little was required to translate from input to storage to output the required computing power was minimal.
A real high resolution display was above 3000 $ still in 1985.
So, no a complete PC AT system with 8514 display etc, disks and plotter etc was still 10000s $
@@ReneKnuvers74rk And now, you can do solid modeling on a laptop with free software. I'm playing with FreeCAD on my desktop now, just because I can... ;-)
@@igorschmidlapp6987 that's only a great fun if you're one of few who have access to that. it's boring to do what is available to millions.
Time to start learning how to store vector coordinates to disk/file and reading them back to plot them to either the screen or plotter output
I really like this retro CAD stuff
And fr shoutouts to the seller for hooking you up after the damage
i lñove how all of these HP products that connect to their computers are very smartly designed and its not just a simple input device or whatnot, amazing as usual
i been really enjoying the whole saga of HP stuff, really interesting, your enthusiasm about getting stuff running and doing actual fun stuff with it is contagious! thanks for the videos
It's probably not that weird that it formats when you move to a new line. It's probably just parsing the line and then re-printing the result of the parsing. If spaces aren't important they'll get ignored by the parser and not show up when it prints.
Next step, storing the points drawn in an array as they're digitized. Then you can save the image in "vector" format by storing the array, print it in vector format on the plotter by switching outputs and re-playing the array draw, and even add deletion and the like by manipulating the array in ram to remove entries, or inserting "pen up" and "pen down" commands to convert a drawn line into a "blank" line, then blanking and re-drawing the new array.
Of course, that's getting rather advanced. :D
What seems a lifetime ago (1989) when I started my almost 30 year stint in the marine electronics industry, I spent hours and hours sitting in front of a Graphtec digitizer tracing marine charts into a primitive JRC chart plotter (NWU-52A). You had to define two points on the chart with latitude and longitude and then you could trace along the coastline. You could also add symbols and change the colors. This was before the days of commercially available electronic charts. Some of the original JRC chart plotters were indeed pen plotters that would actually mark a paper chart with your ships position from the positioning equipment of the day... Loran, Omega, Transit SatNav. How things have changed!
You also might want to reset Button to 1 after MOVE x,y command.
The ink is so you can draw on paper and see where you have made your marks without looking at the screen cursor.
I used an '80s digitizer tablet at a job, but instead of a pen it had a "cursor". It was called a "cursor" but it looked like a corded mouse with a clear plastic cross hair, and you could see a coil of wire embedded in the clear plastic. (It also had 16 buttons on the mouse, in a typical '80s ergonomics disaster). It was very accurate to the cross hair. But also, for someone used to using '80s ball mice, it felt so smooth! Like smooth jazz kind of smooth! Loved it!
I preferred the pen to the puck (felt like drawing with a bar of soap), but, like an instructor once told me, whatever you were trained on is "Mother"...
I used the same "cursor" mouse as a student at a housing developer. Our had an AutoCAD plastic overlay, that put function buttons at the periphery and could be activated in AutoCAD without using the keyboard. The template was transparent to see through to the paper plans beneath for tracing into the computer.
As a mechanical engineer who uses AutoCAD and Revit daily, I'd really like to see what the actual CAD software looked like back then.
- Does that digitizer have a puck?
- Do you have a drum-plotter or a flat-bed-plotter?
- I'd love to get all of the things I used back in the day for the nostalgia, but then again, I have too much stuff as it is, including plenty of stuff I wouldn't use and just have _only_ for the nostalgia. I wonder if people like Shelby consider what will happen with their collections once they're gone. 🤔
Don’t take this the wrong way, but as someone from the olden days it is fun seeing someone with no CAD background trying to make sense of this old hardware.
I started my career with the city sewerage and water supply authority. They had about 100 years worth of drawings which needed to be converted to CAD. There was a large department full of guys with large (probably A0) digitisers methodically working through the thousands of drawings.
Meanwhile, we were next door designing more infrastructure using manual drafting.
I suppose CAD was still in its infancy and there were probably no CAD operators outside the digitisation project.
One small thing though. I can’t think of any reason to go directly from digitiser to plotter. Fun, but ultimately rather silly.
And pen plotters were a pain in the arse to use in real life. We were so happy when their replacement came along.
That pen trick or whatever is so neat, I miss all the little hidden things electronics would hide, especially on something portable to allow you to do things you never knew it even did or sometimes like a tool or something built right in that you find after it broke or something and realize it was meant to help you and right under your fingertips the whole time lol .... I keep forgetting how darn good this channel is ... I'll end up overlooking something because it's a normal title and a great thumbnail, but not click-bait or anything so then I'll finally click one and immediately binge on a few and love your videos! 🍻🌎❤️🌮🖥️
Found your channel a few weeks ago and been binge watching them, thanks man!
Im 23 min in and it looks like you're re writing LOGO in BASIC....
Awesome to see this old stuff working. You're really documenting/preserving history, this is very helpful. It would be really cool to see the old CAD
This is totally above a Koala Pad. What a gem.
Bentley Microstation cad software was used with these in early 1990's.
It may have been Unix based.
Maybe Bentley can offer some information.
I wonder how complicated it would be for real time transfer to the plotter like you theorized in the very beginning of the video... Pen moving the plotter in real time and only drawing when you press down.
Hello.
First professional Mechanical CAD system I was working with in 1992 was HP’s ME-10, which ran on series 300 workstation. Software itself relies heavy on digitizer, which was part of the system. I used HP46088A (which is some kind of successor to 9111A). IMHO it was one of the best 2D CAD solutions of the time but was extremely costly if purchased in bundle with HP hardware.
Kind regards from Slovenia
Jože
I believe that this was delivered in a set with Hewlett Packard's CAD software (ME--5, ME-10 or ME-30 which had 3D) but it was running on 9000 series of Unix workstations
Something that'd be good for QoL with that program would to make it automatically go back to the main mode after moving to a different spot.
this has quickly become my favourite retro tech channel
I mean, that's super cool, but...
Can it run Doom? 🤔
I have access to HP ME10. Not sure it is compatible with your hardware though.
hp computer museum has....
Application Software
Name: AutoCAD for 150
Associated Hardware: HP-150
Introduced: 1985
Product Number: 47956A
Media: 3.5 inch SS/DD
Teledisk: 2.16
if this is any use to you
I remember a cad tablet from the 386 days that used a weird 'mouse' that had a transparent circle above the buttons with a copper wire coil around it and 2 wires in an X pattern which it used to determine where on the tablet that pointer was.
It also came with printed 'button' sheets and the entire layout of that sheet had to be programmed/loaded into Autocad using LISP language I think it was.
Then you had to click 2 anchor points to calibrate the tablet vs autocad and it would be very accurate after that.
Probably a lot of software sold through HP consulting and pretty sure all of that wasn't commercially distributed, and if the customer company didn't care, they didn't preserve it.
I would guess that this pen may never have had any ink and they have pickt it because a small ball rolls better than just a pointy tip slides along.
that glass isopropyl jar you have is really cool, is there a name for that?
The most popular brand name for them is Menda, I call them “Menda Bottles”, they sell them in a large variety of materials options and colors.
thanks@@KANahas
The Coleco Adan was the evil twin brother of the Coleco Adam.
Been a draftsman for over 25 yrs now... I used to see a digitizer like this in some dusty corner around the office once in a while, but I never saw one in-use professionally. And I've drafted in old DOS versions of AutoCAD, and learned to draft by hand on paper.
Intreasting my grandpa was head of the I think president (dont remeber could be sales) for a HP CAD program. Its cool to see it in use.
I wanted to learn this and went to college. Quickly gave up, and then designed all the plans for my factories with a sheet of drafting film, pencil and ruler ! Total waste of time trying to learn this and use it !
On the subject of old hp stuff, can anyone tell me what a hp cart 4722b was used for?
I remember interfacing a giant HP plotter (took 3 foot wide sheets, maybe even 4) to a 386 running AutoCAD 11 in grade 10. This stuff was already ancient in 1997, but it was the last time I used a plotter. Nice to see one here being used again, the clacking and whirring brought back some interesting memories I hadn't thought about in over a quarter century ;)
I'd guess the ink is there in case you wanted to draw from a blank page directly on the digitizer or maybe so you could track what's already been retraced without looking at the screen?
That case has definite CoCo vibes.
Technology back then was so interesting, just like equipment design. They had a kind of cool charm; all that space age vibe i think.
could the beep be modulated by x,y? that would make a sweet synth thingie
yes, beep has 3 octaves freq and length. I wrote an hpib program to do just that :)
You could rename your channel to nostalgia hoarding 😂
2:50 My first Wacom tablet, the Intuos 1, had buttons along here. I never used them because my eyes were always on the screen.
Man, people talk about computing being a wild west in the 80's and 90's
The 70's seems to be "Ok user so now write your own software to interface with the hardware" I'm a developer by trade and I find that daunting
I worked with a company that was using a tablet for an electronic CAD program in the late '80's-- I don't recall if it was an HP or not, but it also had an electronic pickup. The guys wanted a new electronic component menu for the cad program, instead of the one that came with the unit, so they printed a newe one out on the plotter. Didn't work at all -- results of clicks were all over the map. Finally found out the plotter ink was conductive. IIRC, the resistor SYMBOL was about 2Kohms. Tis radiated the contact position all over hte nearby area.
I had a Summer Graphics tablet about 20yrs ago for use with AutoCAD. Cost me $400 new but ended up selling it on eBay for $30 because I had no drivers for Windows XP. 🙁
I used to work with similar tables, ours had a mouse with a cross-hair on the front for more precision. the buttons where like tools menus - what you have today on the screen. The CAD software came with overlays you put under the matt, with the appropriate tools and menus etc.
I'm fairly sure he has a video showcasing a setup like you are describing.
Going from that type of setup to an early Windows version of Autocad was such a step backwards is why I got out of CAD.
@@RocketboyX I do not longer remember the software we where using back then, but that was way before Windows came along. It was sort of late 80s, similar computer like he had in the video.
I vaguely remember that some of it was Digital machines.
@@RocketboyX I actually never worked on a Windows system my entire life :). I went pretty early on, on Macintoshes when Microsoft was still MSDOS based and stuck with it ever since then.
I'm waiting to see you build an adapter and play Osu! with it.... :P
I'm having flashbacks to Logo Writer.
Omg you use KDE!! My favorite DE!
I was also pleasantly surprised to see something other than Windows 10.
How much did this cost when it was new ? probably more than the buildings that where designed on it.
Why would a program be 10,000$ each? People can write their own software instead.
Because big corporations are willing to pay that much because they would rather spend very high amounts of money if they think its more reliable than take a risk with something cheap or something they have to make themselves. even if the cheaper thing has a 99% chance of being better. they probably had millions to spend maybe even billions. hp only had to sell a few of them to make a profit instead of having to sell a lot of cheaper things to smaller companies or regular people.
Because the purchasing company has someone to sue if it screws up. You can only fire an employee... ;-)
This is the kind of content I love: Seeing things I knew of but never got to play with.
I went from the drafting table to a ComputerVvision CADDS3 mainframe system in 1980 with a huge combination digitize/menu pad. I had to stick with the digitize pen going forward, as the puck/mouse felt like trying to draw with a bar of soap.
A professor once told me, "Whatever you trained on is "Mother"...", and I found that to be true for many users, some of whom swore by the puck.
I learned to be a UNIX system administrator when the ComputerVision system moved off their mainframe to Sun server/workstations. Still had to load 9-track tapes for daily/weekly/monthly backups.
Yep, I'm old... ;-P
I installed quite a few of these when I worked with Ford. Glossy side up, to prevent drag from the ball point. As I remember, there was a specific sized ball point refill just for their digitizers. Something about the ball size being "compatible" with the plastic and not letting it get marred with ink. The concept was that you took notes on paper with the pen and jumped right onto the tablet, saving time. Most got installed with a solid metal rod, instead of a refill, though I think this was just a Ford thing.
Also, RARELY did we trace anything on the tablets. What we DID do was have someone like me sit down with the lead CAD person on a project and create a "tablet template". This consisted of a paper template (held in place with a small piece of sticky tape in the four corners before placing the protector back on) and a "command file".
The command file was a CAD template that simply translated a specific area's tap with a software macro. SImply put, it let the lead CAD guy setup all the specific fasteners and screws on a paper template. After loading the paper and software templates, all you had to do was click a specific fastener and BOOM, the CAD brought it in from the library. Shortly after I started there, the software template could be linked to the CAD file and would automatically load all needed softwares.
This also allow the engineers to change a screw size and propagate the change without having to re-write the template. Change the paper overlay and change the part number in the catalog. VOILA, CAD accepted the changes and everyone was on the same page and BOL sheet.
awesome stuff I would love to know a real world example where this tech was actually used
If ever you need a new ink cylinder that looks exactly like the ones in the ubiquitous skilcraft fed govt ballpoint pens
The ink tank is designed to be empty, the conductive properties of the METAL tank makes the connection between the tablet and the wire. Additionally, the use of what is, in its native environment, a regular consumable ensures that there are no proprietary refills like today's plastic nib tablet pens, which keeps the tablet working no matter what and regardless of the company's future manufacturing.
When I was in HS in the mid 90's we had a CAD/CAM setup similar to this donated to the school's Industrial arts program. We were basically STEM before STEM. We did mostly hand drafting, but occasionally were able to use the CAD setup.
AutoCad for DOS?
You should've got some basic dot to dot puzzles. They would've been perfect to demonstrate the plotting.
Dumb question but have you thought about contacting HP to see if they still have archives of the software for the system?
Knowing these companies they would either ignore him or say they wont give it to him or say its all deleted long ago. even if its actually somewhere in their archive they are just too lazy to check.
to add on to what belstar1128 said, even if HP were to have an archive of software for these systems it would require quite a bit of effort on behalf of HP to retrieve & produce it on a modern format for transmission. Even though HP was the manufacturer of this hardware, I would be amazed if they still had one of these systems with any of the associated peripherals assembled to use to retrieve or access archived data with/from & on top of that those who were actually responsible for the design, coding, etc. of said hardware or anyone who would know how to use it have long since retired.
IDK how but im thinking that the same one my school had in 2002 and I used it for autocad.
I had a huge HP pen plotter i tossed like 10 years ago - it just took up a huge amount of space, and finding working pens for it was getting too expensive for a toy to play with. Now I kinda regret that.
It is a great deal when you repair hardware and connect the devices correctly and write software to digitize. This machine is quite ahead of its time. It can replace AutoCAD Lite.
I suppose the ink in the pen would be there so the designer could see what he is drawing like he was drawing on paper. The plastic film was either meant to be washable or replacable once the drawing was complete.
**I think**
wow i had one of these. you could get a blank for the pen as mine had that in the box but my preticular one had a cross hair mouse like thing attached to it and i didnt have the actuial pin. it did work but via serial in my case it had the hp conector wich i had no idea what to do with at the time.
What’s the shipping transit like over there? Is mail sent via monster truck?
Bro any new cad software would not know wtf to do with that! 😂... you need some Autocad r10 or under
“I’m gonna guess that it will output all commands”
No.
😂
❤❤❤
Дома то же лежит дигитайзер hp такой же только питается от внешнего блока питания. И в комплекте кроме стилуса лежит указатель курсора с кнопками нечто похожее на мышь с стеклом и перекрестьем в нем. На dip переключатели выставил работать в качестве мыша дигитайзер и подключил к компьютеру через переходник usb-rs232
I wish I had known you were into Graphics tablets. I had 2 Kurta GTX digitizer tablets with the mouse type of device I recycled recently.
Can this be connected to a modern PC to be used in a modern cad/art program
Probably not. Radically different connectors. Not to say you couldn't adapt it to a USB port, but it would be a lot of work.
yes, I have mine hooked up to Linux and it acts as a graphics tablet controlling the mouse
using an USB HPIB converter
I owned an 11” 1992 version of this as my art tablet back in the 2000s. It had an apple serial plug and i used it on my ancient upgraded powermac to paint in photoshop and sometimes to play games. It had the mouse with the clear tracing reticle. It was pretty ingenious and i enjoyed it. Simple, fun times.
Wow....I threw away 4 of those out of my closet about 6 years ago.
Imagine if computers still worked like this, where writing software was something you had to do...
That would be awesome for some astronomy geek lab in 1985. We could digitize photos and make all sort of notes on the printouts. Cool program to synchronize it with a plotter. Nice work.
Another great video from you, really found this one fun! Thanks for showing your Basic coding process & getting this old Hardware working again =D
I don't think I've commented on any of your vids yet but have logged a few now... I wanted to say this a an amazing system and looks like a lot of fun. Thank you for the vids you make and keep up the good work!!!
Fun to watch thanks.
Is the audio clipping for anyone else?
dude.... you have lost your marbles
Love your setup there Dude, that is one cool looking machine.
I think you can say that the LEDs are 'frenched' into the tablet.
I believe the pen has ink so that if you wanted to draw on paper while perhaps creating a technical sketch.
Que preciosidad
12:01 How do you do that with your fingers? I can't keep my pinky down on its own with all other finger straight
That was quite awesome to seen all rhis working. Quite the effort to get it working. The basic program for this was so simple, lovely programmers interface.
In the end you need the software to make it do more than what you can do by trying in code
Yooo what is that little alcohol dispenser?