Re: HP 4195A, LIF to DOS conversion util ??

Homer.Simpson <Homer.Simpson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>I've got an old HP4195A network analyzer. It writes data to it's
>3-1/4" floppy in a LIF format. [...] All of the programs seem to be
>unable to read a LIF formatted disk from a DOS (or Windows) floppy
>drive.

Do the programs fail with no warning, or get so far and fail, or what?
Do you know that your floppy drive is good -- can it read FAT (DOS
format) disks without errors?

HP/UX apparently has utilities to deal with LIF. For instance
http://docs.hp.com/en/B9106-90011/lif.4.html . I don't know if HP
publishes a LIF spec, but by looking through the lif* man pages linked
from that URL, you can get some hints about it.

There is a set of Linux utilities that says it will deal with LIF disks;
see http://www.hpcc.org/datafile/hpil/lif_utils.html .

>Anyone have any suggestions?

If you don't have a Linux box, you might be able to use Knoppix (a
bootable Linux CD) to temporarily turn your PC into a Linux system - it
doesn't write to your hard drive. You would need to boot Knoppix,
download and build the LIF utilities (if not already installed in
Knoppix), use the utilities to copy data from the LIF floppy to the RAM
disk that Knoppix sets up, then copy the files from the RAM disk to a
normal FAT floppy, or USB flash drive, or another computer, or whatever.

You might also ask in one of the comp.sys.hp.* groups for advice.

Matt Roberds

.

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