> The alternative is to come up with some GPIB to serial converter that
> we can use to get hard copy of an instrument (an HP 3562A Dynamic
> Signal Analyser) which has no other means of data access (Yeah, I know
> - great project for a PIC!!).

Yes, it is.  GPIB (IEEE 488) has the advantage that the bus transfers are
all synchronous and any bus device can slow things down as needed.  It has
8 parallel data lines and 3 handshaking lines if I remember right (It's
been over 20 years since I worked for HP designing GPIB equipment).  The 3
wire handshake guarantees everything is synchronous.  Once you implement
the GPIB state machine, it should be fairly straight forward to send the
received information to a host via RS-232.

The harder part may be interpreting the information.  The plotter probably
talks one of the many dialects of HPGL.  Figuring out which one and
writing the HPGL interpreter sounds like the biggest chunk of work.


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