HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Jeff
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Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by Jeff »

EduardoLM wrote:Thanks a lot, Jeff! The writing worked, but only tomorrow I will have access to the HP4145B again, so I still don't know if it will boot correctly.

The only detail are the N characters at the last tracks, it happened again. Do you think it's a problem?

Thanks again,

Eduardo
No,this is just some blank tracks.

mike_5555
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Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2015 7:08 pm

Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by mike_5555 »

Many thanks to HxC Floppy Drive Emulator developers and to Skot9000 for getting it to work in HP4145B instruments. I recently installed it in our HP4145B. It works great. Your post (and boot files) made it possible. Thank you so much.

famhien
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Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 4:26 am
Location: South Korea, Kwangju

Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by famhien »

Hello Guys~~

My lab also have one HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer, but the Labview software which allows a user to set and
update parameters using a workstation was broken.

Can you send me the software package?

Actually I'm not good at computer .. then is there anybody can teach me how to install this software

Many thks~~

Have a great day

emulatethis
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Apr 17, 2017 9:37 pm

Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by emulatethis »

Hi all,

Thanks you very much for the work you have done here.

I recently ran into the same issue with the HP4145B. I've tried following all the steps in this thread, I have also gotten the board posted in this thread fabricated. However, I cannot get the HP4145B to boot. I first get the error M21 followed by error M19.

Is there a specific dip switch setting that needs to be done on the slim floppy emulator?

Also, the floppy drive inside this HP4145B was a Sony MP-F52W-20 (instead of -30). I am not sure if this changes anything.

Thanks!

ADRIANASILVA
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2018 4:30 pm

Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by ADRIANASILVA »

Betawi wrote:
Wed May 14, 2014 11:01 pm
Our proof of concept hack.
IMG_20140514_141243.jpg
IMG_20140514_141052.jpg
Now just to dress it up.
Hi,

I'm installing the floppy emulator in a 4145B, can you send me the pin layout of the floppy cable on the 4145b? I would really appreciate it.

Also is there another hardware adjustments?

Thank you for your help.

Jeff
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Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by Jeff »

You can found the gerber in a previous post. You read them with some gerber viewer to see the connections.

http://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopi ... 1296#p9801

stevens69
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Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by stevens69 »

I'd just like to report that I was able to create an HP 4145B boot disk from the STARTUPA_HFE.zip image supplied by Jeff with the settings hints provided by EduardoLM back in 2014 on a Windows XP computer from ~2005 with an unknown FDD and controller. Since it took a few tries, here's a brief outline of the steps I took in case anyone else needs to do this (or in case I forget years from now):

1. Place a blank disk in the A: drive and format, checking the "Create an MS-DOS startup disk" box
2. Copy and extract STARTUPA_HFE.IMD to subdirectory on C:, and rename to STARTUP1.IMD (DOS filename length limits)
3. Copy and extract IMD118 to the same subdirectory.
4. Restart computer and change BIOS settings to boot first from A: drive
5. Reboot from A: drive into DOS with formatted MS-DOS disk prepared earlier.
6. CD to subdirectory created earlier on C:
7. Place tape over HD hole on disc (all I had were HD discs from ~2000) and insert into A: drive
8. Use following settings:
Drive : A
Cylinders : 83
Double-step : Off
R/W gap : Calculated
Format gap : Calculated
Format fill : E5
Full analysis : No
Interleave : BestGuess
Retries : 5
Keep bad sector: No
500 kbps -> : 500 kbps
300 kbps -> : 300 kbps
250 kbps -> : 250 kbps
9. Run IMD118 and select STARTUP1.IMD. After a few minutes, it will finish. Boot up your 4145B!

Thank you so much for this resource. When the floppy drive in the 4145B fails, I'll retrofit the HxC emulator. Now to tune up the display . . .

J. Stevens

picburner
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Joined: Mon May 09, 2016 7:16 pm

Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by picburner »

If it may be useful to some 4145B owners, this attached is the v1.20 boot disk.
4145B_120.zip
(76.47 KiB) Downloaded 251 times

PMK145
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2016 1:44 pm

Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by PMK145 »

Many thanks all for the information regarding the HP 4145B and the HxC device. I'm going to try applying all of this to a logic analyzer (HP 1662A). I've taken a punt by uploading the kindly attached Gerber files to a PCB manufacturer. We'll see if my gamble pays off!

Does anybody already have a diskette image for a 1662A (or other 1660A series logic analyzer?). I'm hoping the instrument has the necessary diskettes in good condition so I can use them and capture their contents for the SD card, but I'd like to know there's a backup plan!

I've order a slim HxC for this purpose. Hopefully it will all be fine and just need a small amount of fettling. If not, well it's as much the journey as the destination that counts!

Friendly911
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Joined: Mon Aug 16, 2021 1:20 am

Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by Friendly911 »

This board is great, I have been stuck with so many dead ends, I never touched a floppy drive before this.
I am looking to write the provided imd file here to a floppy, though as an outsider I am finding it incredibly difficult to use imagedisk.

Tried using dosbox on windows 10 with a 1.44mb drive read/writer from amazon(being sure to mount the a drive as a floppy) where when I click to write it doesn't list the idm file or allow me to navigate around. Also trying to clean or measure the rpm seemingly does nothing.

I found an old xp machine and that can boot up and then run imagedisk on, even has a floppy drive. Following Steven's guide, I formatted a 1.44mb floppy selecting it as a boot disk and covered up the HD box? Running imagedisk off of command prompt it now says something at the top, and when trying to find the file to write I can actually navigate to it. Trying to write now it says "No interrupt from FDC"? The old xp machine probably has a 1.44 mb floppy drive too if that makes a difference.

Any help would be very greatly appreciated!
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Jeff
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Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by Jeff »

Friendly911 wrote:
Mon Aug 16, 2021 1:50 am
This board is great, I have been stuck with so many dead ends, I never touched a floppy drive before this.
I am looking to write the provided imd file here to a floppy, though as an outsider I am finding it incredibly difficult to use imagedisk.

Tried using dosbox on windows 10 with a 1.44mb drive read/writer from amazon(being sure to mount the a drive as a floppy) where when I click to write it doesn't list the idm file or allow me to navigate around. Also trying to clean or measure the rpm seemingly does nothing.

I found an old xp machine and that can boot up and then run imagedisk on, even has a floppy drive. Following Steven's guide, I formatted a 1.44mb floppy selecting it as a boot disk and covered up the HD box? Running imagedisk off of command prompt it now says something at the top, and when trying to find the file to write I can actually navigate to it. Trying to write now it says "No interrupt from FDC"? The old xp machine probably has a 1.44 mb floppy drive too if that makes a difference.

Any help would be very greatly appreciated!
ImageDisk should be run on a pure DOS machine. I don't expect it to work on Windows.

Here is some ImageDisk bootable floppy images :

https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_dri ... d_boot.zip

Disconnect any harddisk present in the machine, and boot the imd_boot disk from a floppy disk or a floppy emulator. ImageDisk will be copied into a ramdisk (C:) at boot. This way you can dump a floppy disk to the ramdisk. After this don't forget to copy the .imd file present in C: to another floppy disk (or another floppy disk image on the emulator).

If you want to write an imd file, copy it to the c: ramdisk. you can try to edit the imd_boot img file to add it directly to the boot disk.

Friendly911
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Aug 16, 2021 1:20 am

Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by Friendly911 »

Woo I got it working, Jeff is real legend, keeping this board active and helping soo many people with old hardware.
Image
Image
I could not get the file Jeff provided to work, burning it to a floppy and booting off it. Though thank you so much for trying and sending that over.
For all those in the next 10 years reading this, this is the 2021 solution I used.

You need an older computer that has a floppy drive to motherboard, a usb-floppy will not work as it communicates with the unit differently.
I used 1.44mb floppies, the last type and all that I could find. Tape over the box in the bottom right corner so the drive thinks its a 720kb type which you need.
Open cmd and format the drive by typing: format a: /T:80 /N:9

Then make a bootable usb with freedos, a common usb formatting tool called Rufus can be utilized for this.
Drag the imagedrive files afterwards to the usb along with the Startup_HFE.imd(rename to something shorter)
Otherwise attached are the files from the usb I used:
https://mega.nz/file/73BknDYZ#XLaKALR9o ... LmzBfk8iKU

Boot to the usb and run the imd file, for my files that means just typing C:\imd\imd
That will launch image disk, at the menu press esc then S to edit the settings. As older posts very kindly mention the details are:
Drive: A
Cylinders: 83
Sides: One
Double-step: Off
R/W gap: Calculated
Format gap: Calculated
Format Fill: E5
Full analysis: No
Interleave: Best Guess
Retries: 5
Keep bad sector: No
500kbps -> 500kbps
300kbps -> 300kbps
250kbps -> 250kbps
After this press esc to stop editing the settings. Then press W, select the S1 file or whatever your renamed Startup imd file is called, you can navigate with the arrows keys. Press enter and it will start to write to the floppy.

After all the effort to get it working I wrote the rest of this floppy disk box with the HP4145B images, if you just want a copy vs going through the above just contact me at matthart610@yahoo.com.

aekalman
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Joined: Wed Apr 20, 2022 5:51 am

Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by aekalman »

Hello.

I'm really and truly lost, trying to get an HxC SLIM SD working in an HP 8753D VNA.

I have:
  1. (Tried to) Update the firmware to HXCFESlim_V2_1_2_40.upd.
  2. Copied the two files from the HP4145B boot disk to the SD Card.
  3. Ensured that the IDA0 jumper is set.
But I am unable to read or format/initialize the "internal disk" aka the ex-floppy drive which is now an HxC SLIM SD. All I get is various disk errors reported by the 8753D ("NO DISK MEDIUM IN DRIVE" when attempting to format, etc.).

My 8753D's old floppy drive died.

I've read through the manuals but I'm clearly missing some basic concept -- what do I need to get this all working? For example, I really don't understand why people need to be interacting with floppies and floppy images with original files that came with their HP instruments. Is there something I need to do there? The 8753D VNA does not require any floppy diskette in the drive to boot or operate (the floppies are used mainly for calibration files).

I am assuming that all of the HP instruments of this era (late 90's) interface to their floppy disk drives in pretty much the same way, and that said floppies are readable as DOS-format floppies. I just want to be able to store settings on the "internal disk", which is now an SD card.

Anyway, and help appreciated both at the high level ("How is this all supposed to work?") and/or at the low level ("Put these files on your SD card and it will start working.").

Thanking you in advance,

-Andrew

P.S. I also tried the file in this thread on the 8753ES and when I try to format the "internal drive", now I get a "DISK IS WRITE PROTECTED" error.

aekalman
Posts: 2
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Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by aekalman »

Well, I still don't understand the entire HxC ecosystem, but Jeff very quickly helped me get my HxC SD SLIM working on my HP 8753D VNA.

I've attached the two files that I copied to a freshly FAT32-formatted 16GB SD Card.
HP_8753D_VNA.zip
Files for HxC SD SLIM in HP 8753D Vector Network Analyzer
(70.53 KiB) Downloaded 120 times
Thanks, Jeff!

kedwardsmetrop
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 16, 2023 2:28 pm

Re: HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer

Post by kedwardsmetrop »

My apologies for resurrecting this, hugely appreciate the info on here. I've used the old HxC for lots of audio console floppy projects but am stumped by my HP 4145B. I've wired it up as intended and copied to a fresh FAT32 card, but am getting M02 errors on the unit & a solid red light on the emulator. I feel I must be missing something very simple! Are there any steps to the process I may have missed that are obvious to previous SD module users?
Best wishes
James

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