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My solution is not exactly low-cost either, but I found it to be quite useful.
I bought an interface converter from a company called Black Box (whose address
I have misplaced but I could come up with it if anyone is interested in this);
this converter plugs into the IEEE bus that links the components of the HP
system together and translates the data on the bus to a RS232 serial data
stream. Then I had a summer student write a Mac application that captures the
serial data through the modem port of a Mac. The converter is confugured to
look like a printer to the HP system. To use this system, you get the desired
histogram or dot plot displayed on the HP screen, send it to the printer, and
the converter sends the data as a serial stream to the Mac. The application
program captures the graphic as a data file and then converts it to a Paint
image that can be opened by Canvas. It can then be manipulated in any way you
like, for example to replace the axis labels with high quality lettering,
overlay histograms, add color for slide presentations, (remove those pesky
unwanted populations of cells), and so on.
The up side of this system is that you don't need to buy a scanner if you don't
already have one; the down side is that the converter box cost as much as a
good scanner ($500) and is only good for this one function. But I am sure that
the conversion box could be built by a electrical shop for much less than that.
Another caveat: we had the older HP system (HP200 or 300 I think) and used the
system with Consort 30 and with the BD Research Software. I have no idea if
this would work with LYSYS since the file format of the graphic might be
different. I am now at a different institution and we have all Macs interfaced
to our BD instruments, so I will probably never need to use the system again. I
do have access to an old HP320 running LYSYS so it would be possible to check
out how it might work on other systems. I would also make the software
available to anyone who is interested (it is a bit buggy, this was, after all,
a summer student).
Hope this helps!
Jerry Spangrude
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