Those cables you're looking at have exactly the right number of pins for GPIB; your issue is that the arm doesn't use GPIB, at least not the arm's connectors used to interface it to a computer.
The following information is taken from this copy of the manual that I found on archive.org
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The 36-pin micro-ribbon connector is a standard Centronics parallel interface used for PCs and printers, and you can use any standard PC<->printer parallel cable with that port.
The 25-pin D-subminiature DB-25 connector is a standard serial connector with the device acting as DTE (data terminal equipment, like a computer, as opposed to DCE like a modem) so you will need to use a "null modem" cable to connect it to your computer. It's set to 9600 bps 7 data bits even parity and 2 stop bits by default; this is set with SW2 and SW3 under the door on the unit. (I suggest always turning the unit off before changing any switch settings.) Detailed instructions on the various settings are given in Appendix 2.3 of the manual, but the most standard setting would be 9600/N/8/1 set with:
- SW2: Switches 1-8:
1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1
- SW3: Switch 8 on, all others off.
Either of these can be used to send commands to the arm. Serial is probably easier when using a computer, but there's also an example here of connecting and programming an Arduino for parallel communication, if you want to see how that works at a lowish level.
Comands are simple short sequences of ASCII characters. The manual suggests that sending NT
, the "return to origin" command, is a good test sequence to see if communications is working. The full set of commands is described in chapter 3 of the manual.
The additional 50-pin micro-ribbon connector, if present, gives connectivity to one of four different kinds of "external I/O" cards using different protocols from the ones described below. This is more complex to use and you probably don't want to bother with it unless you're good with electronics and ready to dig into the detailed description of it in the manual.