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A project log for Running code on the HP 1653B Logic Analyzer

I ported a falling blocks game to my logic analyzer.

alexander-r-prussAlexander R Pruss 01/17/2026 at 14:130 Comments

About a decade ago, I saw an HP 1653B Oscilloscope and Logic Analyzer on Craigslist for $50, including probes, pods, diskettes and three volumes of manuals. I was going to buy it, but when the seller heard about my hobby interests, he just gave it to me for free. Thank you!

The copyright date on the ROM code is 1987. It's a great unit. Reliable and nice. I've used it as an oscilloscope (but not logic analyzer) for many projects. There are full manuals here.

The system has a 3.5" floppy drive which it boots from. I've always been afraid of the floppies failing.

Some years back, I made a Greaseweazle out of a Blue Pill and an old PC floppy drive. This let me transfer the system disc to my PC:

gw read --format ibm.scan --tracks=c=0-79:h=0-1 outputfile.hfe::bitrate=500

The HFE file can then be converted to a raw file with SAMDisk

SAMDisk copy outputfile.hfe outputfile.raw

 The file system is LIF and I was able to use lifutils to extra the SYSTEM_ operating system file from the raw files. I tried to disassemble it with Ghidra in order to run my code on it, but failed (more on that later). 

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