Plotting For The First Time - HP 7470A

[@FrankConforti]

A little bit of background… I recently retired (2020) after 43 years in the CAD/CAM/CAE world. As a result, I’ve got a lot of plotting time on many different plotters and systems. My first system was a ComputerVision CADDS 1 that ran on a Data General Nova 1200. The “pen plotter” we used was built by CV and it was essentially a digitizer and plotter in one. An E-size drawing could take an hour to plot. Later in my career I was introduced to the Calcomp 960, a pen plotter with outstanding speed and it could plot on an E-size paper taped to its “belt”. By then the work I was doing was more sophisticated so it still took an hour or hours to plot an E-size drawing. That was all back when the computers were DEC PDP11s, DEC Vaxs, Prime, all super mini computers. Those days we were so innocent. My major gripe with all pen plotters were they failed you at the most in opportune times, like “tomorrow we have a meeting with the Pratt-Whitney to go over these engineering drawings, make sure everything’s prepared. Somehow, a CAD operator had accidentally duplicated the border of the drawing 1,000 times but back then you couldn’t tell. Having to run the plotters overnight to be ready, this little “issue” uncovered a serious problem. The plotters would draw most of the drawings (on Mylar “paper”) then the 1,000 rectangles. The pen would run out of ink quickly then essentially cut out the center of the drawing which fell to the floor. A 2AM call (I was the supervisor) from the CAD operator on duty that night had me driving in and sorting this mess out. After some time analyzing the issue we were able to get rid of 999 of those duplicated rectangles and continued the plotting operation. We got the drawings completed about an hour late but the client understood this sort of thing can happen. I look back at these days and smile. BTW, I have the multiple pen version of your plotter up in the attic. It’s been there for 25 years. I wonder if it still works. The pens are still sealed in their vacuum packed foil pouches. I guess I should drag it down and see if it works. Cheers!

[@bknesheim]

The office where I work had one of the large plotter from HP that used roles of Mylar “paper” and printed for hours next to where I was sitting. Would recognize that sound in my sleep. 🙂

[@Grim-oc9fw]

@@bknesheim i could recognize your stink in my sleep

[@denniseldridge2936]

Hey there, I've also had some small experience in a design bureau. I worked for a couple of years at a PCB layout design company in the mid-80s where we had a system also based on the PDP-11. I believe the name was Telesys, but I'm not sure, as I've not been able to find any reference to it online. I also used at various times the large format plotter, and the very plotter that is featured in this video, both a lot of fun to watch working.

[@andrzejczarnota3661]

And how do you feel after 43 years of doing same work every day? Didn't you want to try something else, new, different, more exciting?

[@ekenedilichukwuekeh4647]

Do you have any book/learning resources recommendations from any time? I’m a student. You know something that clarifies things

[@richardhaas39]

I applied for a job fixing plotters in 1981 before PC's. I did not get the job but the gentleman did describe the equipment. There was a plotter there that was 100" by 100". The bed was sheet of glass. To keep the bed at a constant temperature there were lights under the glass that were turned on and off by a thermostat. He told me that the National Weather Service was a customer. The company was Aristo Graphics and their American office was in Whippany, NJ. He told me that Aristo had been the world's largest maker of slide rules. He showed me a very basic electric calculator with Aristo branding and told me the the Japanese manufacturer had approached them, not the other way around. It looks like Aristo are still in business in Austria. In the job I did have (pre-PC) one customer with a plotter was Bendix Aviation in Teterboro, NJ. Bendix's mainframe was in Southfield, MI. Another customer did finite element analysis on the cross section of subway wheels and on guy wires for giant antennas. They dialed up to a mainframe in Pittsburg.

[@zh84]

This is the sort of thing I used to fantasise about in the middle 80s: a computer with a 256x192 display, a printer and a tape drive built in, and a plotter! Now get it to draw the Lorenz attractor...

[@suvetar]

When I was a young lad, in the mid 80s, I always remember being taken to an open day at the Royal British Geological Survey, near where I lived in Nottingham (yeah Robin Hood!) ... They had an A3 sized plotter and I remember the guy demo'ing it printed off one of those (wrong term I know) linear sisemic/contour maps that show the height of under-ocean geological features! I was blown away by that. still am! I suppose another cool fact is that the concept of these ink plotters probably contributed a lot to the advent of modern 3D printers! I love how tech inspires and grows ... like that long wave of yours there! Thanks for the great video man!

[@paveloleynikov4715]

That HP-85 is one hell of proper retrofuturistic machine

[@DavidPaulsen-lv8sl]

Fun plotting video! I worked for HP, and wrote all the firmware that is in that plotter! Brings back memories. Great to see one still working.

[@rusticagenerica]

DEAR GOD ! You are a living legend !! Let me say hello to you Sir. Please tell us some more!

[@MrMaxeemum]

There is something magical about plotter prints. I would love one but I don't need one, but I do want one.

[@Harrstein]

Spend so much time watching my dad's a1 sized carousel hp plotter at work with autocad. Really ging the good old vibes.

[@TheDoctorhuw]

I was at college in the early 80's so this took me back to a very happy place!

[@viraxclone]

Very cool to see one of these out in the wild! My father worked at HP in the late 80s and as they retired equipment he was about to bring some of it home. In fact, my youngest childhood was full of experiences on first generation 286 and 386 HP Vectra machines! In addition to the vectras, we also had one of these 7470A plotters, as well as a 7475A, which worked the same, but used a carrousel to load pens into and it would rotate and pick the pen needed according to what was needed for the plot. The program we used a lot, at home, was The HP Drawing Gallery, which I saw as the grandfather to The Print Shop Deluxe. It had hundreds of artwork shapes, designs, etc that you could print out, or in our case, plot. My father working at HP, qualified for free ink pens and paper, as they saw it as a "work from home" thing. I know that we at least still have the 7475A, but no ink pens that I am aware of. I have a Vectra QS/16 that I hope to one day get the HP-IB card going in, and connect the plotter to do some HP Drawing Gallery plots. As of right now, it's been about 30 years since I can remember using it!

[@TheSleepyCraftsman]

Your genuine joy brings a smile to my face. All you're missing is the happy dance.

[@perinoid]

Great! And the fact that the same plotter language introduced years ago is still supported by modern software... awesome!

[@deeiks12]

Back in elementary school my classmates mother was an architect and had a plotter at home. We found a demo disk for a CAD package which had all kinds of sample drawings / sketches on it. We modified and plotted them, like making a cars tyres bigger and drawing a gun on its bonnet. I remember how awesome the plots looked compared to regular 9 pin dot matrix printers back then.

[@Bloowashere]

oh man, this is cool. I grew up with my dad doing his own sign business. He used a plotter to make die cut stickers that he would then use for signs

[@Kiteboardshaper]

A couple of years ago I was given a vinyl cutter/plotter with no software. Throwing some raw HPGL codes down a null modem cable got me enough info to write a Python driver for Rhino to allow me plot and cut vinyl stickers. I know the exact joy you show in this video!

[@jeromethiel4323]

When i was repairing printers/scanners/plotters back in the 80's (and floppy drives as well), we used 3 in 1 oil to lubricate the rails. A small drop on each side, then run the carriage back and forth a few times to get a very thin coating of oil. Clean up any drips. You do NOT want excessive oil. A little goes a long way.

[@greggv8]

Vacuum pump oil would be ideal now. It doesn't dry out like other oils because it has very low or zero volatile components. It has to be that way or the volatiles would be pulled out of the oil by the pump. I use it for lubing old PC cooling fans.

[@jeromethiel4323]

@@greggv8 That is a very good idea! I would have never thought of that. We just used what was easily available. 3 in 1 oil is full of volatiles, you can smell it very easily. We also used CPL break free, which supposedly had teflon in it, and it seemed to work well. But vacuum pump oil, provided is was not too viscous could work very well, and for a long time. Even so, sliding rails do need to be cleaned from time to time, simply because they collect dust that needs to be cleaned out.

[@radio655]

Ooooh, HP86! I am drooling!

[@caiserECEguy]

It’s very cool you got it working this well. I’m an electrical engineer and when I was in college in the early 2000s, we had a lab that had several stations with HP oscilloscopes connected directly to these plotters. We had to build circuits for lab assignments and then submit plots of their outputs captured with the scope for our lab reports. These were older HP scopes with only a GPIB connector, no USB, no floppy. The plotters were vital to completing your lab work and out of three or four in the lab, there was maybe one good pen left so yeah lots of frustrating hours spent trying to get plots to hand in. But I knew they would’ve worked better with proper maintenance so it’s very gratifying to finally see one working this well!

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

I love my 7470A back in high school. Found one used dirt cheap, and did all sorts of random stuff on it. My favorite was using a "handwriting" style font in Windows 3.1 and plotting a paper for English class. Even better? I hacked together a mechanical pencil into a broken plotter pen, and plotted it on lined notebook paper. 😁 I was a drafting student, and we used the large kind like the one you have in storage in class. So getting one for home felt so fancy! Especially since our home printer at the time was a tractor-feed dot matrix, so the plotter was my first color "printer."

[@tootalldan5702]

I enjoy your enthusiastic behavior on the project. It reminded me of the old Radio Shack 2.5 inch plotter when I was in high school. Thanks for sharing the details.

[@richshealer3755]

I used to sell these and its biiger brother the 7550A (8-pens) in the late 80's. I used then to create dungon maps for games like ZORK and Planetfall. I used HP Drawing Gallery software to make the maps. I remember the same joy you showed watching it make a nice neat map. We sold the plotters, with an RS-232 interface, to a lot of companies to print graphics from Lotus 1-2-3. Downside it made a single sheet and completly tied up the computer. So we sold them a serial print buffer, Quadram's I believe. They would send the print job to the plotter. The buffer quickly consummed the job and freed the computer. Then when the print was finished they hit a reprint button on the buffer and it sent another copy to the plotter. Repeat as needed.

[@jackscott8931]

Man I could watch that plot various graphs all day. It is so hypnotic!!! You GOTTA get your big one working!

[@mutestingray]

That's what she's never said to me. Or he for that matter. Hell, anyone.

[@twilliamc3]

I have always wanted to see a large format plotter make D&D maps. I feel it is an untapped market. :D

[@FrankConforti]

I have an e-size HP Design-Jet plotter. It’s a prototype my employer got back when HP was about to enter the marketplace. It works just fine except it’s hunger for ink. Thankfully, it doesn’t have a chip in the cartridges that kills empty cartridges. I’ve used it to plot all sorts of drawings. Thankfully, MicroStation software, my go to CAD software can directly generate HPGL2 commands to use the capability of this printer. If you have enough ink this sucker will print it. It might be marked as a prototype but it works fine with any OS or program that supports it. BTW, it is supposedly backwards compatible HPGL so as long as you don’t need the fill feature or image dithering it should should work great.

[@c1ph3rpunk]

Plotting to take over the world eh?

[@ChuckvdL]

My desire to make big maps for BattleTech is the reason Generic CADD has a “honeycomb” hash (fill) pattern. It would easily run on nearly any DOS machine you might have (floating point coprocessor highly beneficial) and drive that HP pen plotter over a serial interface. But really if you have an inkjet based plotter, it’s really a very big printer that also accepts HP/GL.

[@greggv8]

@@FrankConforti HPGL is 100% plain text ASCII. HPGL/2 is all of HPGL plus additional stuff that uses characters outside the basic ASCII set. It's still "plain text" but opening a HPGL/2 plot file in a text editor that doesn't do extended ASCII will show you a mess, or a lot of ? or empty boxes or nothing at all where the higher characters should be. The TL:DR is that all HPGL/2 devices should be compatible with HPGL.

[@AxelWerner]

Plotters plotting text and diagrams are just the most beautiful sight to me, from day one. its like magic.

[@curiouscrandall1]

Used one of those in my first job. They had one of these, and what I now realise was a HP-83 (no printer, no tape drive). I'm pretty certain there's a self-test page you can get with some kind of multi-finger salute. Fun fact. The drive rollers were an HP patented idea. They are coated with industrial diamond grit. The idea is that on the first in-out paper feed, the rollers lay a load of depressions in the underside of the paper in the track of the rollers. On subsequent paper movements, the diamond particles tend to go back into the depressions they formed first time. That is why the plotter can draw many vertical lines, each one lining up with a horizontal line at the end. The tendency to re-use the existing grit pattern in the paper stops it walking as it feeds in and out.

[@johnhoog8279]

Thank you for this. I noted the roller grit but never imagined this side benefit. Always did wonder about their paper alignment system as it whipped back and forth. Magic!

[@jeromethiel4323]

The HP printer plotters of the 80's were amazing. I did a lot of programming in basic to get the 7470 my high school had in the drafting class working and plotting. You could easily print with it, but plotting required sending commands to the plotter, and you had to know what the commands were. Good times.

[@jeromethiel4323]

Oh yeah, our plotter was connected to an Apple ][+.

[@arbutuswatcher]

I used the HP 7470a plotter in college (1992-1996), for drawing schematic diagrams. The DOS application program was called OrCAD. For the time, the plots were crisp & accurate.

[@ametaljag]

First!... I had an 7475A with the 6 pen carousel in the 90's (business write-0ff) but had no use for it. Sold it a long time ago with lots of pens and special paper. They are fascinating to watch when they're busy.

[@srfrg9707]

Reminds me so much things. My dad had an HP85 and the same plotter. He was a engineer. He used his plotter to draw the machining diagrams of the three-dimensional structure covering parts of the JFK airport in New York. Rotring used to make rapidograph styluses for HP plotters to draws legit tracings on translucent paper for blueprints.

[@DanSpeck]

I had this same setup when I was a student/staff member in college in the mid-80’s. This really brought back memories. I LOVED being able to plot data on the HP plotter. The HP 85 was pretty cool in its day, too. Thanks for sharing!

[@iroll]

Love. It. Not nearly as cool, but I spotted a 42" HP plotter that was about 15 years old on state surplus, so you know it had been run hard and barely maintained. I got it for about a hundred bucks and then spent another hundred or so on heads, belts, this-and-that, and a Saturday disassembling it and cleaning the spitoon and station... it was amazingly crapped up. But, true to HP form, it cranks right up and prints like a champ! I charge $5 a sheet for it and it's payed itself back probably twice over now... but mostly I just like hearing it cranking away and watching the sheets fall out.

[@SteelJM1]

Haven't seen a plotter since I was a little kid. My dad brought me to his job one day (electrical engineer) and the plotter they had was huge, I want to say it was A0 or maybe even B0 sized paper, and had several pen colors. Mesmerizing to watch for a 6 year old. Also the wave soldering machine.

[@tomr.knudsen3897]

Hello Right back at you, can not start to explain how helpful your videos are when feeling down. Never fails to make me forget about the world, and just go into a happy place filled with old tech, even things like a plotter that I have never heard about, im curious to look up some more of it, seems really awesome!!!

[@tss20148]

During my junior and senior years of high school, 85-87, I worked in the local warehouse of a plotter supplies company. We fulfilled smaller local orders. Larger orders came out of a warehouse in CA. HP plotters were popular with our small to medium sized customers but large firms seemed to prefer Calcomp plotters.

[@kanalnamn]

Some time around 1985 my father got to borrow a HP setup from work. It had the larger plotter you showed in the beginning, and also a touch screen monitor that used rays of light in a cross pattern. Watching the pens draw was like watching magic.

[@TheOtherNEO]

Now brings back memories for me too. Same thing, my dad would bring equipment from work time-to-time, and plotter being one of them. Must have been a newer model, but physically looked the same. Used it with AutoCAD but it was on a XT clone so probably used a newer interface.

[@ToTheGAMES]

CursiousMarc has a formidable selection of pens. You could ask him.

[@RussSirois]

Reminds me of when I made a carrier/adapter to put Pilot G2 cartridges on the Zund G3 cutter at my previous job -- I suddenly had a 5ft by 8ft flatbed plotter! I used the hatch fill function from the routing mode to get fill-ins. That machine was much more modern though and moved considerably faster, but just as entertaining as watching this HP do it's thing. I'd totally buy a plotter but I'm considering fabricating a mount for my Ender 5+ and using that instead ...

[@gtb81.]

Ohhh now i want one for drawing schematics! My new printer never works when it should, and this thing just woke right back up with some cleaning! Amazing, and congrats!

[@Cherijo78]

I think the last time I used a plotter was a large format plotter in our theater department. I had a light plot in minicad that I plotted out on it. After that there was no point because the local shop got an actual large format printer that was reasonably priced and that was the end of the usefulness of the plotter. Using it was a treat though, considering that my lighting design professor wanted everything for actual class work done by hand despite the fact that the industry was moving to CAD by that point in time. It was "but you won't always have a calculator with you" syndrome.

[@lookitsahorner]

Hardcopy plotted couldn't have been more appropriate! Nicely done!

[@DMahalko]

X-Y motion plotter tech is still commonly used. A drag-knife paper and vinyl sign cutter such as CriCut is a plotter. A plasma cutter or waterjet cutter is a plotter. Huge X-Y motion vacuum tables several meters long are used for industrial multilayer fabric, foam, and carpet cutting. KZbin example: "Eastman Talon 25x Insulation Fiberglass Aramid Carpet Product Overview"

[@robinbrowne5419]

Back in the 80s my boss bought a similar HP plotter for his monthly sales reports. He asked us to test it out before connecting it to his computer. We plotted Christmas posters such as Santa, Rudolph, Snowman, Christmas Tree, etc to decorate the office. When it finally came time for him to plot his graph, the ink pens were empty and he was furious :-)

[@franklincerpico7702]

Your dedication to these relicts of computing past is amazing. I don't know if I would have the patience to a fraction of the research and troubleshooting you seem to just to make these half hour videos for our entertainment.

[@olik136]

as an architect.. printers are the bane of my existence... and my patience with them is limited at best.. at least older printers had some quality to them..

[@KG4JYS]

Plotters are so cool. We've got a giant (more modern) HP plotter at my office in a storage area. The print area is about 15 feet wide. I've never seen it actually running.

[@ChristopherGaul]

I've used my share of these and IBM plotters and yeah, it's always cool to watch. Windows used to support HP/GL printers directly, including over serial ports. Don't know if it still does or when it stopped if it doesn't anymore. Win2k certainly does. You should be able to set it up as a standard printer in Windows and print to it from most raster drawing software. As for the rails, a very light coating of white lithium grease was standard maintenance. Clean with isopropyl alcohol and a lint free cloth. 3-in1 oil should replace the factory service lube on the various bearings, bushings, and spindles. Again, in very light amounts.

[@greggv8]

I couldn't find anything for Windows XP for plotter support. I had to resort to cutting flat slices from a 3D model, exporting to DXF, finding a DXF to HPGL converter, then using a command prompt to COPY the PLT files to the COM port.

[@RetroJack]

Watching plotters plot has always been so satisfying!

[@jspencerg]

Total respect for your efforts and skill to get this working.

[@andrewb9830]

Boy does that sound bring back memories.

[@agranero6]

You brought me back to my first job. I even made a course on HP to use HP-85. I loved the tiny machine as much as the others. For that time it was awesome.

[@GeorgesChannel]

Great episode. I love plotting graphics...

[@markpitts5194]

I have a drag knife for mine an use it to cut vinyl stickers. Not perfect but it works. Back in the day i used for plotting pcbs with opaque pigment ink, and used UV exposure. Now its PCBWay or JLC or the rest of 'em.

[@MadMorgie6318]

Damn, I love your enthusiasm, it's just such a delight to see. Just a nerd nerding it up and loving it. The fact you can make it work with machines from literally *decades* after it came out is just awesome.

[@esra_erimez]

That outro was simply amazing!!! Well done!!!

[@CC-ke5np]

There are adapters for HP pen plotter pens out there. For my plotter, I just used a lathe to drill a hole through the old HP pen and now I can stick a standard ballpoint pen into the old pen. A Fischer spacepen cartridge works well. Also you can buy knife cartridges since most vinyl cutters use the same shape as the HP pens. Those cartridges are adjustable so you can replace the knife with a ballpoint cartridge cut to length. Just wrap the cartridge stub with masking tape to make it fit. If you do convert a standard HP pen, you can use any pen but you need to keep the lid open since a normal pen sticks out quite far. Also you can treat old ribbon cartridges and old plotter pens with WD-40. Just add a tiny amount of WD40 to get the ink liquid again. It won’t dry very well on paper but this is OK to get some more uses out of old stock, especially for testing purposes.

[@ingvers1436]

Awesome video and awesome device, so simple yet so useful. I don't why you have only 50k views in, I think your videos are worth close to million views! Hoping to see more CAD/Printing stuff!

[@gorak9000]

I had a plotter like that (except mine had the pen carousel, not 2 individual pens on each side) that I modified to use Staedtler Lumocolor pens to directly draw etch resist on copper circuit boards. That was probably in about 2004 - 2005 time. If you take an old dried out pen body and hollow it out, a Staedtler pen nearly fits right into it (needs one wrap of scotch tape on the Staedtler pen to make it fit snugly into the HP plotter pen body). I had to cut a slot in the top cover as well to allow the full sized pen to go from the carousel over to the drawing area (and run it with the lid open). Basically just tape a piece of circuit board to a piece of paper, load it in, and draw the traces directly to the board with the Staedtler pen. Then etch in your favorite etchant. It actually worked, but it was kindof a PIA to setup. I gave the plotter to a friend when I moved, so don't have it anymore. It also had the serial interface, not GPIB. I would expect you could also put a drag knife from a modern vinyl cutter in it too and use it that was as well.

[@ianphilip6281]

Great work Shelby! Must admit I too have a soft spot for plotters since seeing and hearing them working in person many years ago. If those pens do run out keep hold of them and with a little creativity they would be relatively simple to refill with an ink of your choice, looking at the nibs, it would have to be an very thin alcohol based ink to flow properly and consistently. Though a cut down inexpensive ballpoint in a custom holder would be amusing to see. Perhaps modern similar replacements are available too as modern plotters are still used for certain purposes and I don't imagine the pens have changed much.

[@CraigPetersen12f36b]

I have 3 7470A plotters, 2 HP-IB and one serial. I also have a HP 7475A with the HP-IB interface. I use them with my test and measurement set up, most recently with a HP 8752A. Pens for these units are still available. The only plotter I haven't been able to get working is the 7470A with the 25 pin serial interface, so at this point, it will be a parts unit. Make sure when you are not using your plotters keep the rollers lifted off the drive rollers.

[@sarkybugger5009]

Pulled something very similar to this out of a skip, back in the early nineties. It looked the same as this, but it had an eight pen carousel, and a 9 pin serial port. Posted a request to HP support BBS for the DIP switch settings,, and got a reply to my FIDONET mail the next day. The days of good customer support are long behind us. Was running it with AutoCad under DOS.

[@jacobamador7989]

Windows 98 works great for these plotters! That was the last os that got dedicated drivers made by hp for their plotter lineup.

[@rommix0]

Of course. Windows 98se is like the best system for anything retro (especially gaming).

[@jacobamador7989]

@@rommix0 yep. I got a dedicated win 98 machine just to run my hp pen plotter collection. Winline works great too but is quite expensive for what it does imo.

[@tschak909]

The HP 7470A. The single most ubiquitous HP plotter ever made and sold.

[@egmccann]

I was trained (decades ago) as a draftsman, using AutoCAD on DOS... I'll say just watching plotters (though we had the large format ones typically) o their thing is just nifty.

[@hobbified]

For playing with more modern machines, Prologix makes some decent GPIB adapters (to USB-serial and to Ethernet) that are cheaper than the National Instruments ones and generally pretty straightforward to use.

[@InfiniteLoop]

We had a plotter in middle school computer class in the mid 80’s it was fun to use and I preferred to use it over the daisy wheels to print my work

[@RacerX-]

Love it. I have a DIGITAL Corporation plotter, which is really a rebadged HP 7475A and it uses the same pens. There is a company that still makes compatible pens and a website called draftingsteals that sells them. You may want to call them to make sure they have them in stock because the last time I ordered from them they took a while to get them to me and I found out that they were waiting on a manufacturer order. Anyway the pens work great and are good for both Paper and Transparency. If you find another source, please share. Most of the NOS pens I have found by HP have been dried up. You can sort of reink them by using sharpie innards to replace the ink inside but it is hit or miss.

[@andybrice2711]

Surely it would be quite easy to 3D-print these pens and put marker nibs in them?

[@RacerX-]

@@andybrice2711 There is already 3d models available on thingiverse. Some are adapters for regular tall markers, that won't work in these units and some are for putting a replacement nib. The problem is positioning the new nib inside and getting it close to the exact height of the original is not that easy. I have had better success re-inking them with replacement inkers from Magic Markers.

[@annybodykila]

I just 3d printed a spring loaded pen holder for my 3d printer and clip paper to the bed, its very fast and accurate, also easy to do muti colors.

[@6581punk]

I just got a computerised sewing machine and I'm putting logos on everything right now. Works in a similar way but moves the material around instead, plus has to go through the material :)

[@6581punk]

Although some plotters do roll the paper back and forwards, especially the big ones.

[@thosegangmembers]

Just found your channel - quite enjoyable. I've worked with HP test equipment for some time, but nothing quite this old. We always pronounced the IEEE-488 interface as G-P-I-B. You will find it across a wide range of test gear even today. LXI (ethernet) is also typically offered on modern equipment, but the underlying SCPI syntax dates to the equipment you have shown here (or shortly thereafter). If the serial adapter continues to give you issues, I would recommend a "GPIB-USB-HS" or HS+. The majority on eBay are fake, but they work fine. There is also the "GPIB‑ENET/1000" for networked remote access. For quick prototyping we used Python with the PyVESA library, then LabView. Good luck and happy experimenting!

[@HolgerT]

I studied electronics and finished my diploma thesis in 1990. A wrote a program in Basic to acquire data from a Tectronics spectrum analyzer to a DOS PC. Part of the data acquisition was to write a plotter routine for a HP 7475A plotter which was connected to the PC via an IEEE 488. Worked very well, just took a while to get a diagram printed. Still remember all the pin-up and pin-down commands 😂. And I still have the plots in my thesis.

[@keigezellig]

My father used to work with an HP7475A (and i believe he still has it somewhere) connected to an IBM PC to draw graphs from FORTRAN programs he developed himself. The 7475A has support for 6 pens instead of 2 in the 7470A and i remember it was quite hilarious to see (and hear) it draw and switching pens (i was 10 years old back then). I did even make some simple BASIC programs to fiddle around with HPGL and draw things myself.. Ah brings back memories

[@frankparsinitz5406]

In your video you mentioned trying to source more pens. CuriousMarc did a video explaining how he takes old used pens and opens them then he adds new ink to the pens. I love your videos and I hope that this is some help to you.

[@Ice_Karma]

21:43 "Computers are cursed and nothing ever works like it is supposed to" In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. 😹

[@leglessinoz]

I used to use what was basically the A3 version of this plotter (HP7475A) everyday along with a Roland large format pen/pencil plotter.

[@andrewwright1200]

I used to use a 7475A 6 pen in the 1980's, and used a BBC B to drive it originally (home written in HP-GL) , and later a IBM PC XT with some old lotus software.

[@parkerlreed]

The inkscape silhouette plug in is modified GPIB for all of the commands. It allows me to directly export to the silhouette cutter either with a blade or pen within the carriage.

[@maedero05]

Little memory of the 80´s I worked in a architectbureau and playes with the Rotring Lettering machine a semi automatic writing device. Experienced Acad wit a fast course localy. Eventualy no career for me in this business as most work in projects on demand. Like to see the large ploter in action as the smaller ones don´t have the dimensions for plotting larger projects. Interesting theré´s some kind of similiair asignment system like scsi used to adres devices. Nice to see some text and vector sample demos !

[@bigwave_dave8468]

I had an HP 7550A I got from Boeing Surplus before they closed that amazing community resource. It worked fine with Windows for Workgroups and a 2D CAD package I was using. I tossed it due to space and the fact you can´t print anything but it sure was cool to do 11x17 mechanical drawings. Pens were a PITA.

[@CrassSpektakel]

I remember these beasts from when I used an CBM3032. But I am pretty sure mine was connectected over parallel IEEE-488. It then was controlled by standard CBM/Microsoft-Open/Print/Close-Commands. Pretty straight forward.

[@spgoo1]

Wow, this exact model was hooked up to the similarly ancienr Perkin Elmer FTIR spectrometers in the senior undergraduate teaching lab in the mid 2000s. They were still operarional in the early 2010s when I finished teaching there. This was the same time you could get other spectra simply from your storage on the cloud... decades apart in the same lab

[@EthanBB]

This was extremely entertaining to watch! Thank you for another great video Shelby.

[@mhyzon1]

I used 7470A GPIB plotters in the upper class physics labs back in college. They were pretty great!

[@systemchris]

This is so cool! I love seeing things like this! Ye olde company standards that are still usable is awesome to see, looks like it's just plain text serial over a different connector with some markup language attached. DnD maps I can imagine it being great for haha

[@coolthinghere6853]

the logo would look great with some hatching added, and if you can find a black marker c: perhaps something could be 3d printed or custom made to hold a small regular marker? i dont know if theres anything specific to plotter markers besides the shape to fit in the holder, but it would be funny to see it using crayola!

[@nrdesign1991]

3D Printing an adapter for standard modern pens would be great!

[@jeffteepell4754]

When I was a kid, my parents had a typewriter that was basically a plotter. Had little pens it could switch to different colors, do graphs and the like. I don't know the brand, model or what happened to it. I played with it constantly and always thought it was neat. Worked just like this thing in a lot of ways, except it was a typewriter.

[@Ragnar8504]

Could have been a Brother Type-O-Graph, that's the only thing a quick online search turned up, apart from a bilingual English/Chinese Fortec that was designed in Hong Kong.

[@jeffteepell4754]

@@Ragnar8504 Yep, that's it. I think it might be the BP-30 as I remember it being white but not having red buttons. It has been a long time though.

[@shadowrunner2323]

I've got a brother Type-a-Graph, and this thing reminds me so much of it. Seems to use the same basic tech. really neat to see what hooking that type of output to an actual computer can accomplish.

[@captianmorgan7627]

My father had one similar to that larger tabletop pen plotter when I was young. I'd spend hours just watching it go.

[@Megabean]

I would love to get one of these working as a prop. I do videomaking but my hobby is vintage eletronics. A huge part of me wants to combine the two by creating a prop house of old electronics haha

[@jakekong007]

At 1989, during my school years, my lab bought HP GC/MS system with this 7470 plotter. Alas, what a good and innocent days! (and my hairs...)

[@bschwand]

Gpib is still very commonly used in instrumentation and testing equipment

[@beefaroni4733]

that was one of the coolest ways of printing (well... plotting?) i've ever seen and would love to see it do cross-hatched artwork. i know it would take forever but even just some parallel lines in a box. any chances you'll release a video of a rather simple thing being printed (or even another one of those grids) but in full, real time? i'd love to just... watch.

[@olik136]

although plotters (with actual pens) are a thing of the past... you still have to set the colors in Autocad like there would be pens in there. That is also the number one reason why colors in print outs are wrong since the 255 "default" colors are normally set to black- but all the other possible layer colors are not defined by the plot table and get printed out as that actual color

[@jspencerg]

HP was on the bleeding edge of implementing ideas!

[@K-o-R]

I remember finding a plotter in our "cupboard of random hardware". I can't remember what it was but we got it working with a Windows 98 PC and a bog standard serial cable ("Generic pen plotter" driver, I think). Drawing a large filled-in letter took a VERY long time as it drew horizontal lines and then outlined afterwards. Watching the purely mechanical pen change was fascinating.

[@thromboid]

I was always fascinated by plotters but have never owned one, and only got to use them briefly in high school. But I do think 3D printers should more accurately be termed "3D plotters". :)

[@ferrellsl]

@Tech Tangents Back in the day, Windows 3.11 had drivers for this plotter as did AutoCAD 12 for DOS. Setup under Windows and AutoCAD was pretty trivial.

[@Narwaro]

I also use my 7550A for plotting schematics from KiCAD as well as drawings from FreeCAD and blender. The 7550A also has a serial port and I made a cable for it. You can literally cat your HPGL file into the serial port of a USB serial converter and it works flawlessly.

[@tekvax01]

I burned a lot of sunlight using these plotters back in the early 90s! lots of velum, paper, and pens everywhere!

[@rickharriss]

Back in the day we use to make a HP pen holder that had a through hole so we could use standard Parker pen refills . Not too hard to 3D print.

[@The1RandomFool]

That little display on the HP 85 looks pretty good for its size.

[@bionicgeekgrrl]

This is awesome. My father had one when I was a kid, but it didn't tend to get much use as it was very temperamental (my father having been given it as it'd developed a fault and he mostly fixed it). Incidentally, there's probably quite a bit of commonality with these and things like cricuts, and some people have replaced the pens for cutting items to make a computerised cutting device and engraver. The 3d printers sold that offer engraving use a variation on this as fdm printers are kind of closely related in some respects to plotters. So if you find it impossible to find suitable pens, this could be an interesting experiment to keep it being usable.