Okay..thanks (o;
But my primary question was more about the levels I can feed into the analyzer cards...
This is going deep into my memory (my first job at HP, 26 years ago, was the Product Support Engineer for the 16500 and 1650)...
* Yes, a RS-232 signal can easily be managed by the 16500A acquisition cards. The threshold can be set to +/- 9.9V with .1V increments; while the dynamic range is +/-10V from threshold. Although RS-232 swings to +/-12V you are really just focused on the threshold level. As you noted the max voltage is +/-40V.
* The debugging/disassembly was done through a bus interface 'preprocessor'. The model number is a 10342B and maybe can find one on the used market very cheap. The 10342B basically converted different bus interfaces to the logic analyzer pods; plus the configuration software and the disassembly software. I think it converted RS-232, RS-449 and HP-IB.
Hope this helps!
Mike