HP16500C with HP16517A & HP16518A cards

[vincei]

I just got a job lot of HP16517A & HP16518A cards with jumpers to gang the cards together. I installed the cards into a 16501A mainframe and connected it to a 16500C that has other cards in it.

All 5 slots in the 16501A with the 18A/17A cards are showing "unrecognized card". I can't believe all these cards are dead - highly unlikely - so what do I need to do to get the device to recognize the new cards? I can post pictures if required.

Thanks!
Vince

[MadTux]

See if 16500C mainframe has the "driver" files installed. Should be a file with 16517 or 16518 in it.
Should be on a couple of floppies that you could download from HP Keysight website.
Without that file, the card isn't recognized.

[vincei]

Hi, Thanks for the response. Apologies for the late reply - I wanted to make sure that I had all bases covered.

As it turns out I didn't really have to do anything in software. It occurred to me that the mainframe and the cards that I purchased are very old and were giving strange and random device id's hence being unrecognized. I sprayed all the connectors on all five cards and the expander frame edge connectors with  M&G chemicals contact cleaner and re-seated all the boards.  And, boom, happy Vince.

In the multi-day search for what might be the issue I also tracked down the last firmware version release by HP for the 16500C - it was extremely difficult to find! Over the weekend I'll backup the hard-disk and take a shot at installing this later version of the software.

https://www.keysight.com/main/editorial.jspx?cc=US&lc=eng&ckey=1000004086:epsg:faq&nid=-536902551.536880500&id=1000004086:epsg:faq

Thanks again for the assistance!

-Vince