HP 4145B boot disk and Murphy's Law

[TerraHertz]

A while ago I bought a HP 4145B semiconductor parameter analyzer. Originally in perfect condition, it came with the essential boot 3.5" floppy, booted and worked. However the machine had been poorly packed and the front frame had three corners dinged in transport. Which was kind of OK, since the result was I got a total refund via a shipping insurance claim.

At that time I didn't yet have the user manual or any blank floppies of the right format. So rather than make multiple copies of the boot disk immediately as would have been wise, I put it aside.

Since then I obtained the manual and some boxes of the correct floppies, but was busy with other stuff so still put off making the backups.

Just recently I bought a very badly damaged 4145B on which the front frame is in perfect condition. It arrived (no shipping damage), and also had a floppy labelled "4145B boot disk" loaded in the drive.

But that machine doesn't power up, and the front keyboard has many broken buttons. The vector display unit, a HP 1345A does work on the bench though!

Anyway I only bought it for spares, starting with the front frame. After swapping that to the first machine, the plan was to make backups of the boot disk.

But now, it doesn't boot! Off either of the disks. With both floppies the machine gives an error, 'not correct format' and makes repeated 'seeking to track zero' clicking sounds.

Hmm... Well I do have a spares machine. I swapped in (loose, just the cable connected) the spare floppy drive. Same result.
Then also swapped in the floppy controller card (just a thought.) No difference.

Great. So BOTH of the floppy disks are corrupted? But one of them was working before...

Another possibility was that both floppy drives have 'old grease' syndrome, with one of them (my first machine) having gone bad since I last used it (about a year.) Conceivable...

So I did a tear down, clean and regrease of the spare machine's floppy drive.  Success! Now the good machine, with that drive and my original boot disk works fine. Phew. But the other disk labelled "4145B boot disk" shows no sign of being what it says it is. Nada, possibly not even formated.

This is the point at which I really, really should have made some backup disks.  But no... I wanted to see if the other drive, the one that I knew used to work, would also come good after cleaning. Gave it the same treatment. All these old floppy drives have the problem of grease going stiff on friction points, and particularly the head positioning lead screw. Result is the head doesn't position accurately. Also typically the floppy doesn't load and unload properly.

After giving that drive the cleaning treatment then cabling it into the good 4145B, what I should have done was stick some other random floppy in it, with the motor spinning. Just to check it didn't do anything bad to my ONE, precious boot floppy.

Did I? No of course not, that would be too sensible. Also I was doing this today a couple of hours after having my last wisdom tooth out (at age 66) so perhaps I wasn't as 'wisdom' as usual. I powered it up and loaded the precious boot disk.

Immediate horrible disk grinding sounds. The machine partially booted, then froze, with the head cycling back and forth around mid disk. I stopped it, pulled out the floppy and had a look at the media surface. Yep, rough in a band on one side. It's kaput.

But it only mangled that one disk. Any other disks I load now, it's fine. Seems when I cleaned the heads on this one I must have left some surface contamination. Which is gone now, having done its job of stuffing my one boot disk.

Bah. This happened just before the local anesthetic wore off, so now I am not very happy at all.

I do plan to eventually install one of the known-to-work floppy disk emulators in the machine. But not yet. I'd rather familiarize with the machine in the original configuration for a while.

So, does anyone in Sydney have a working HP 4145B? And can make a couple of boot floppies? I can come pick them up, to avoid postal delays and other issues with posting floppy disks.


Edit to add: Oh now I realize what I did wrong! I'd opened the operating manual to the page with proceedure to make backups of the boot disk. Had it open right next to the machine. And a pack of new blank floppies next to it. So OF COURSE that was when my one boot floppy would get destroyed.

[knudch]

My guess is that it use the old HP "LIF" format which there exist utilities for copy etc. on a "standard" PC with a 3,5" drive

[TerraHertz]

It is definitely LIF. And there are ways to create them from images, but those are all painful rabbit holes involving lots of 'PC stuffing around' - setting up a separate machine, installing an old OS, finding 'right' combinations of floppy drives and controllers, iffy results with obscure defects...

I really don't want to do that now. Some other time when I have a week to waste, and better pain tollerance.

Looks like I'll have to buy a properly created floppy online and wait for postage.

[Stray Electron]

Terrahertz,

   Unfortunately the problem is even worse than you describe. In some old style HP disk drives the drive lifts the disk before ejecting it and I found out the hard way that sticktion will sometimes cause the drive not to lift the disk quite enough. Frequently one head is still resting on the disk and if you pull the disk out, the plastic frame of the disk will catch on the head and pull it off of the mechanism or irreversibly damage the head's gimbal.  So it's not enough just to test the drives with a scratch disk, you need to remove the drive from the unit and clean it and re-lubricate it and check that it's ejecting properly before using any disk in it or you risk ruining the drive itself.

  FWIW a local scrapper got ahold of a HP 4145B years ago and I did my best to buy it from him but he was convinced that the gold content was worth far more so he spent an entire day tearing it to bits for the gold boards.  IIRC he later told me that he got a whopping $23 for the gold boards.  I couldn't convince him of the stupidity of spending 8+ hours of labor to get $23 of gold scrap!  Everyone that I know of in the scrap business simply loses their mind at the thought of getting GOLD scrap!  I've seen literally tens of tons of good old computers and high quality test equipment get torn down for the gold in it.

[0culus]

Terra, sent you a PM. If you can't find someone locally I can definitely make you a boot disk if you're willing to send one to the US.

[TERRA Operative]

This link might help:

https://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1296&sid=f8b7ad362935663dd6bf06002ff3b211&start=15

[TerraHertz]

Terrahertz,

   Unfortunately the problem is even worse than you describe. In some old style HP disk drives the drive lifts the disk before ejecting it and I found out the hard way that sticktion will sometimes cause the drive not to lift the disk quite enough. Frequently one head is still resting on the disk and if you pull the disk out, the plastic frame of the disk will catch on the head and pull it off of the mechanism or irreversibly damage the head's gimbal.  So it's not enough just to test the drives with a scratch disk, you need to remove the drive from the unit and clean it and re-lubricate it and check that it's ejecting properly before using any disk in it or you risk ruining the drive itself.

Yes, I am aware of that. I've resurected a few old 3.5" drives, including getting the load/eject mechanisms to work smoothly.
The two 4145B drives, both got completely disassembled, degreased, dusted, reassembled with new lithium grease where needed, and made to work smoothly with disk load and eject. Just without power so the media wasn't turning.
I'm still not exactly sure what happened this one critical time. I had carefully cleaned the heads with an IPA soaked swab. Visually inspected them. No sign of any problem. The first drive was fine, entirely worked. The second drive wrecked the first disk loaded while power applied, instantly when the media rotated. THen after that was fine. Bit mysterious. Did I somehow get grit or grease on the head after cleaning it? Don't know how...

  FWIW a local scrapper got ahold of a HP 4145B years ago and I did my best to buy it from him but he was convinced that the gold content was worth far more so he spent an entire day tearing it to bits for the gold boards.  IIRC he later told me that he got a whopping $23 for the gold boards.  I couldn't convince him of the stupidity of spending 8+ hours of labor to get $23 of gold scrap!  Everyone that I know of in the scrap business simply loses their mind at the thought of getting GOLD scrap!  I've seen literally tens of tons of good old computers and high quality test equipment get torn down for the gold in it.

Oh god... thanks for making me feel sick. How much do I hate senseless gold scrappers? Like I hate Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Tedros Ghebreyesus, and all the other globalist genocidal scum.
The 'gold recovery' thing with some people seems like a delusional mania. Same with people that destroy rare old printed works in order to scan them (badly.) Indiscriminate gold scrappers and book destroyers should be lined up with the lawyers and fascist politicians and shot, when the (greatly overdue) revolution starts.

Speaking of people irrationally destroying a 4145B, I have a story to tell. Next post.

TERRA Operative - thanks, I already have that link, in my collection re LIF emulators. I will get to that. Just now want to get it working again the _simple_ way. Like the HP Gods intended. Then I'll experiment using my 'spares' 4145B.

[TERRA Operative]

The last post of that link describes how to create a disk using a PC booted with a DOS boot disk. Shouldn't be too hard?

[george.b]

The last post of that link describes how to create a disk using a PC booted with a DOS boot disk. Shouldn't be too hard?

Not too hard at all, provided you have an old computer with a proper FDC lying around. I have attached the image file I used and can vouch for to this post. I got it from here: https://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1296

Edit: just saw that the topic I linked was the same one you linked. Oh well. The file is here in case anyone needs it anyhow.

[TerraHertz]

A machine with a mysterious past

My first 4145B was bought in late August 2020. It was in pristine condition, working, included a boot disk and some triax cables, and sold for US$350 - a lot less than they usually go for. The seller was clearing some gear from their business, and had zero ebay history. Hence no other takers at his low asking price. After a brief discussion with him, I decided he was genuine, and it was other people's loss. The shipping was quite a lot, $150 in the USA, plus US$400 airfreight to Australia (big & heavy = $_pain) but this is normal.

Unfortunately between the US and Sydney UPS dropped the box heavily (multiple times?) and three of the four corners of the front diecast frame got dinged. It still ran and _only_ the front frame was damaged, but that was annoying.

Meanwhile my wife of 32 years was slowly dying of a horrible autoimmune disorder, and the covid hysteria was ramping up. So the 4145B got put aside for the moment. Plus I didn't yet have the manuals or any packs of the right MF2DD floppy disks to make boot disk copies.  I did eventually succeed with a shipping insurance claim, so pretty much got the machine almost for free. The manuals and boxes of floppies were bought and arrived. Minor victories among the ruins...

Fast forward to early 2021, and starting to think about resuming with the 4145B. I would like to fix or replace that damaged frame first, it's an eyesore. One possibility was to cut away the bent corners, rebuild with UV-cure epoxy, and see if I could paint with something 'close enough'. But it's hard to match color and texture, plus epoxy corners could easily get broken off again.

Then in May 2021 I came across this ebay listing:

HP Agilent 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer
For parts or not working
Price:  US $449.99
Seller phxsaab9000 (1208 )
Shipping: FREE Standard Shipping
Located in: Litchfield Park, Arizona
HP Agilent 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer. Condition is "For parts or not working". Look at the photos. Unit does power on but screen does not light up and many buttons are broken as is shown. Unit is entirely for parts.
Shipping: free for you but EXPENSIVE for me, this thing is BIG and HEAVY.

01_2.jpg
01_3.jpg
01_5.jpg
01_6.jpg
01_7.jpg
01_8.jpg

I've included most ofl the listing photos, because they start to show the mystery with this machine. What _happened_ to the poor thing? How is it so DE-screwed?

Still, even allowing that the shipping from Arizona to LA would be around $100, the price was way too high for such a wreck.

Guessing, I'd say the front panel got carelessly bashed, breaking many of the buttons. So then someone opened the front to investigate repairing it? Or were they trying to repair one broken button (see below), and dropped the PCB  breaking many more buttons? Maybe even threw it in a rage when their button-fix failed miserably?

But almost every visible screw is missing, front and back! Why the back? So what is the inside like? Might be completely gutted. Also WHY are all the screws missing? The person never bothered to replace them? That would suggest someone giving up in disgust. But it's still a mental thing to do.

I made the seller a realistic offer. $200 for the machine, plus his actual shipping cost, but provisional on him taking the top cover off and sending me a photo showing the interior is intact, all cards present. And did he happen to know how it came to be missing all the screws? In hindsight it may have been a mistake to imply only a crazy person would lose all the screws.

Well! He replied very curtly, as if I'd deeply insulted him. Absolutely rejecting my offer. It seemed he felt the value was far higher, perhaps influenced by the average prices of 4145Bs in good working order. Or maybe _he_ lost the screws.
A brief exchange later, he seemed determined to stick to his price and irate enough that there was no point attempting to reason with him.

Time passed. He dropped the list price to US $419.99 - still unreasonable. I didn't even bother to ask again.

[TerraHertz]

Then on Nov 7th I found the same machine, listed by a different seller name.
Hewlett Packard HP 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer
For parts or not working
Price:  US $399.99
Seller cpngp ( 5050 )
Shipping: $80.00 Economy Shipping
Located in: Peoria, Arizona

02_1.jpg
02_3.jpg
02_6.jpg
02_7.jpg
02_8.jpg
02_9.jpg


Hmmm...
The prices are so similar and both seller names are nonsense in similar ways.
Google maps says Litchfield Park and Peoria are 19 minutes drive apart. Is this even a different person?

Oh well, I have spare cash atm, let's try again. This time making no mention of all the missing screws and how someone must be an idiot. Since by now I suspect that 'someone' is the original seller, and possibly also this seller. I offered $270 plus shipping, if he would take photos of the insides and the front frame (can't see all of it in the pics) and could assure me he'd be able to pack it for international freight. (I don't want _another_ bent front frame.)

This guy was entirely reasonable and helpful. Different person, or just more sensible after no one snatched up his deal for months?  Strange though... he didn't know how to remove the top cover. I had to explain how there is one screw, and it's under the 'calibration sticker' on the rear edge. This inability seemed significant.

He took the requested photos.
02_from_seller.jpg
02_front_1.jpg
02_front_3.jpg

All the cards are present and the front frame appears fine. But wow, it's not just front and back screws that are missing. Also all the screws around the front frame. Keyboard assy is loose, so are all 4 front mountings of the display unit. Very odd. And there's an internal metalwork bracket missing on the left side.

Anyway, I bought it. Figured that since the first one was effectively free, why not? Plus the display unit alone typically sells for around that price or more. (And I am fascinated by these HP 1345A displays.)

It arrived at my reshipper, just after an extraordinary screwup with another item of mine at the reshipper.
See https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/worst-reshipper-screwup-ever/   
Summary: They _accidentally_threw_out_ an extremely rare and historic HP 1960 catalog. As a result of which they offered a "40% discount on my next mailout." This while the huge and heavy HP 4145B was on its way to them!

The reshipper's photos of the 4145B box externals looked good, so I onshipped it immediately, claiming the discount.
They are still in shock about that and quibbling, but I think I will win that one.

I'd rather not have lost that catalog, but the timing was amazing.

Next: the mystery deepens

[TerraHertz]

The screwy mystery deepens

It arrived, this time with no shipping damage.

03_0085.jpg  good solid box, undamaged
03_0087.jpg  Double boxed!
03_0092.jpg  The white board was holding in the front guts. Took an impact.
03_0094.jpg  No damage apart from the busted keys. If I could find a replacement PCB with buttons...
03_0095.jpg  Bent front panel can be flattened.


03_0099.jpg 
03_0101.jpg  Spot the difference, 99 vs 101
03_0102.jpg

Underneath the side covers, every accessible screw is missing. Every one. Approximately 46 screws.


The whole inner structure is floating, can slide back and forth in the frame. The frame corner screws are gone too. The only screws still holding the frame together are the very edge ones, one per corner, that are not accessible while the top and bottom covers are still present. Those covers are retained by only one screw each, and they are obvious. Except with this machine they are under those very thin but intact calibration stickers. But it is possible to slide off the side covers while the top and bottom covers remain in place.

Whoever was removing all the screws appears to have intended to completely disassemble the machine, but was thwarted by their own incompetence and ignorance. They didn't recognise the calibrations seals for what they were - covers over critical screws. I find it really hard to understand how anyone could be that incapable and stupid. Both to want to disassemble (destroy) the machine, and to be stopped by two tiny, fragile little stickers.

Was that same incompetence how the machine originally had the keyboard smashed?

[TerraHertz]

There's a further clue.
When I pulled out the damaged keyboard assembly, I'd tried all the intact buttons. All work fine except this one:



Whut? Is that... hot melt glue? Why yes, it is. Whoever stuck it down got glue under the switch as well, which of course stuck down the button plunger. I thought that was why the leaf spring was held bent. But no... after gently cutting away the hot melt glue, avoiding damaging traces, I was astonished to find that isn't an original leaf spring. It's a piece of tinplate, apparently cut from a tin can. It has no spring at all, and is permanently that shape.



I can't even... it's like someone with the capabilities of a 6 year old was messing with this machine.

Speaking of childlike, take another look at 02_front_3.jpg above. Top right corner of the pic. See it?
After I told him how to remove the top cover to take a photo inside, he put it back with the right side cover popped out. I asked him to redo that with the side covers properly in place before packing for shipping, and he did. Point is, he didn't notice this himself.

Here's another interesting 'feature' in a pic from the 2nd seller (and also visible in the 1st seller's pics.)



What do you see? Apart from the valliant stickers bravely protecting the machine's last two critical screws, the special screws from the HP-IB socket are gone. The black ones with threaded receptacles in the head, for the cable plug to secure to. But... they have been used to secure the fan cover. (Then because they stick out, one of them was sheared off in shipping the machine to me.)

The 'screw remover' decided to keep the fan cover on (for the photos?) using the only screws from the entire machine that weren't shiny stainless. The nasty black, odd shaped ones. Went to the trouble to pick them out of (presumably) his tray of extracted screws.

But this person, who can't get the top and bottom covers off a HP machine, _surely_ isn't collecting screws for use in repairing other HP machines. He knows nothing about such machines. He's just wanting 'shiny screws.' Maybe even just for scrap stainless steel?

Summary - I got a spares machine semi-intact, all due to two tiny thin stickers thwarting a child-like person.
And I have a pretty large stock of suitable stainless screws, so was able to replace all the missing screws with correct types.

Wrapping up



This is the 'spares' unit, with good front frame removed, and also the side struts. I had to disassemble it a bit more, to get at brackets for the mains switch actuator shaft, that were loose inside due to 'the someone' removing the screws that held them to the side plate (at top here.) Also to get the display unit out to test it.

The machine partially visible to the left, is a HP 3562A Dynamic Signal Analyzer. It had a bent side strut (see https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/hewlett-packard-by-salvador-dali/ ) and I'm waiting on a replacement strut in the post. Ah ha, but this 4145B has exactly the same struts! I'd like to complete and close up the 3562A, so used one of these struts in it. The 4145B can have the one coming in the post.

The damaged front frame, I'll make an attempt at repair and put it on the spares machine. If the repair looks crappy, no matter.



The vector display works! This is its self test pattern.



Screws 4mm x 8

In a discussion about the 3562A, someone asked where to buy the special countersunk screws used in the HP diecast frame corners. Here's some suitable replacements, sourced from Aliexpress and cheap. They are M4, 8mm long, standard countersunk heads. They are slightly longer than the HP screws, and project about 1.5 mm inside the frame. But in that area there's rarely if ever anything hard against the inside of the frame. Just check it first, usually will be OK.

PS. If you are ever replacing one of these 4145B front diecast frames, watch out. It looks completely symmetrical, ie rotating 180 degrees should make no difference. But it is NOT. The left and right sides have very slightly different structural screw hole positions. It's quite confusing when you put it on the wrong way at first, and the screws don't quite line up.

[Stray Electron]

 Wow! Just Wow!   I completely agree with your being suspicious of any machine that has had it's cover screws removed.  That and missing seals over the screws are  the first things that I look for in any Ebay auctions. And screws removed and not replaced screams that the owner simply didn't care! There are many companies in the US, and I'm sure everywhere, that will strip all of the hard to get parts and the valuable metals out of test equipment and then try to sell the carcass on Ebay as "untested".   It's also simply insane at the price that most sellers want for TE that is obviously damaged and in completely unknown operational condition!

  One of my pet peeves are sellers think their TE is of so little value that they throw it around and smash the knobs, the front panels and the connectors, etc but think that is SO valuable when they try to sell it!

  I don't know what a 4145 weighs but I know that it's BIG and I know that HP equipment is usually very HEAVY so I'm surprised that it only cost you $400 to have it shipped to Australia by air.  I've tried to ship much smaller items to Europe and Africa and they wanted that much of more.

  I didn't look at your pictures yet but I will go back and do that.

[TerraHertz]

Wow! Just Wow!   I completely agree with your being suspicious of any machine that has had it's cover screws removed.  That and missing seals over the screws are  the first things that I look for in any Ebay auctions. And screws removed and not replaced screams that the owner simply didn't care! There are many companies in the US, and I'm sure everywhere, that will strip all of the hard to get parts and the valuable metals out of test equipment and then try to sell the carcass on Ebay as "untested".   It's also simply insane at the price that most sellers want for TE that is obviously damaged and in completely unknown operational condition!

Yep, to all of that. I'm normally pretty paranoid about machine condition. But this one was a really special case. In that the implied psychology of 'the someone' was so exceptionally odd.

AND THEN there is the sad fact that many sellers are completely incompetent at safe packing for shipping. It's like they simply can't comprehend that packages get dropped and tossed around, regardless of weight, size, fragile stickers, etc. That I can get the reshipper to take photos of the packing used, helps a bit, so long as the item wasn't already damaged in US post. But with big heavy items, the reshipper too is completely unable to repack propperly. It seems few of their customers ship stuff like this. It's an ongoing sore point, not yet solved.

 

One of my pet peeves are sellers think their TE is of so little value that they throw it around and smash the knobs, the front panels and the connectors, etc but think that is SO valuable when they try to sell it!

Yes! But to be fair, probably such damage happened before they received it.

What IS a seller fault, is so many of them strip equipment down to the smallest possible components and sell it all separately. Often very stupidly. One typical stupidity - with HP 3497A data acquisition frames, the measurement cards slide into slots in the back. They also have plastic 'external cable connection blocks' that fit over the rear of the cards. They are PART of the cards, unique to each card type, and have a sticker with the card part number on them. But when you pull on them, they come off leaving the card in the machine. The cards are quite stiff to extract.
Many, many times I've seen ebay sellers listing just the connector block, described and priced as if it is the whole card assembly.
Idiots. One time I bought a 3497A that still had a bunch of the cards in it, missing the connector blocks. Priced as if it was just the mainframe.

I don't know what a 4145 weighs but I know that it's BIG and I know that HP equipment is usually very HEAVY so I'm surprised that it only cost you $400 to have it shipped to Australia by air.  I've tried to ship much smaller items to Europe and Africa and they wanted that much of more.

The box was 69 lb.
There's a significant discount doing it via the reshipper, due to their volume discount with the carriers.

 

I didn't look at your pictures yet but I will go back and do that.

I deliberately didn't inline most of them, for bandwidth. A lot of pics and  I don't think the topic will interest all that many readers.
The views count ratio between the inlined vs non-inlined pics supports that.

[TERRA Operative]

lol at the push switch... You can glue them back in by just putting two drops of superglue on the back of the PCB, one for each little post that pokes through.