James Willing <jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> While wandering around one of my favourite surplus gear haunts today, I cam
> across a couple of HP 1000 F series minicomputers. While they look neat, I
> know just about nothing about them. Anyone out there familiar enough with
> them to give me the 'infamous 25 words or less' speech on their significance?
They're real-time control systems, based around the 21MX processor
family (which succeeded the 2100 (ca. 1972) and 211[456] (ca. 1967))
and running one of several flavors of HP's RTE operating system.
I've never actually used them.
I worked on them for years.... You will still find them in Nuclear Power Plant control rooms,
all phases of automotive testing and even handling online ATM transactions. The E series was
even
used as a fast front end for Burroughs mainframes. Also lots of military applications.
The front panel/door drops down to show the memory backplane. The top three boards are the
two channel DMA, Memory Protect and MEM (Memory Expansion Controller). This was needed if you
wanted to use more than 32K of memory. The back backplane was for the I/O cards. Near the bottom
is the TBG (Time Base Generator). The Model 2117F had more slots and the hardware floating
point processor was a separate box. The more rare version had the Floating Point boards built
into
the top of the regular case. This meant a loss of memory and I/O slots....
These systems had all kinds of I/O available from paper tape puches/readers to mag tapes
to all kinds of hard disk drives, floppies, terminals, A/D, other instrumentation, etc.
Later they had SCSI and various proprietary and standard networking.
Lots of great memories :-)
At 06:20 PM 11/18/97 +0000, you wrote:
>the following info: (1) The definition is bendable, as circimsances dicatate,
>(2) The definition is pretty much fine as it is, but (3) (The BIG one) Many
Ultimately, the definition is up to Bill Whitson. If people start talking
about stuff he's not interested in, or that he doesn't feel to be the
provenance of this list, he'll a) warn people, b) unsubscribe people, or c)
shut the list down. So personally, because I certainly don't want b) or c)
to happen, and I'd rather a) didn't have to, I'll stick to the topics Bill
had in mind when creating this list. If I'm really desperate to talk about
which 486 motherboards are collectible, I'll start my own collect486 list.
>computers will NOT be significant classics... origionally, as has been pointed
>out, the "10 year" rule was to make sure that IBMs weren't included...
first the
I think it was set so as to avoid current/mainstream computer support
questions. (Which I'm sure most of the people on this list could answer,
but that's not why they've subscribed to this list.) The (admittedly
debateable) position that generic PC's are *not*
significant/collectible/etc. and thusly are not the provenance of this list
is a (IMO) welcome side effect.
(Note: some pc's *are* significant or collectible -- lots of portables, the
corner case one (packard bell?), monorails, Kip's Rose Hill PC (to Kip),
etc. -- they're just not the focus of this list.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)ricochet.net that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
At 06:57 AM 11/18/97 -0800, you wrote:
>At 09:04 11/18/97 +0000, you wrote:
>>I've never understood this love of screwdriver-less cases. If I'm going to
>>be fixing a computer I'm going to have a soldering station, scope, logic
>>analyser, cutters, etc with me. So having a screwdriver set is no big deal
Another thought... I've not yet figured out how to squeeze >24 hours in a
day, and I've got about 54 hours worth of stuff to do every day, so anything
that saves a little time is welcome.
>where I'm at someone's house for dinner, and they say "Oh, BTW, my
>computer's not working," and I didn't bring a screwdriver and they don't
>own a #2 Phillips.
Some people (esp. on this list) may not realize it, but there are actually
hordes of people out there who go their entire lives without ever owning a
single screwdriver. Which is why I've got two in/on my laptop case, several
in my laptop "kit", and a swiss army knife with a flat sd, phillips sd,
pliers, and (8^) corkscrew.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)ricochet.net that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
At 09:04 AM 11/18/97 +0000, you wrote:
>I've never understood this love of screwdriver-less cases. If I'm going to
>be fixing a computer I'm going to have a soldering station, scope, logic
>analyser, cutters, etc with me. So having a screwdriver set is no big deal
It's not so much for *fixing* as it is for *upgrading*. If you want to swap
in a new floppy drive or add memory or what-have-you, it's much easier on
some computers than others.
S-100's were great in some respects -- just lift the ears and the boards pop
right out. Or, drop 'em in the channels and they slide right in. The Mac
8500AV, on the other hand, requires nearly a complete disassembly just to
add some memory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)ricochet.net that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
What do you think of this...
I have a guy in Jacksonville FL with a Heathkit H11 system. CPU, dual 8"
disk drive unit, all software and manuals. Cost of shipping (to NY).
Is the H11 just a repackaged PDP-11?? What else can you tell me about
it?
Rich Cini/WUGNET
<rcini(a)msn.com>
- ClubWin! Charter Member (6)
- MCP Windows 95/Networking
At 14:02 11/18/97 -0800, Tim wrote:
>.... Some drives have even removed the
>drive select jumper options, forcing you to use the half-baked concept
>of a cable with a twist in the middle.
Half-baked, yet burned.
____________________________________________________________
Kip Crosby, honcho, mechanic and sole proprietor, Kip's Garage
http://www.kipsgarage.com: rumors, tech tips and philosophy for the trenches
Coming Spring '98: The Windows 98 Bible by Kip Crosby and Fred Davis!
> Age, also, alone, does not make a classic. I doubt that the standard
>run-of-the-mill '386 PeeCee will ever amount to anything except to,
>perhaps, archaeologists who dig one out of a landfill. There were too
>many of them made, and they were (are) regarded as "disposable". Look
>at the construction - modern machines aren't made to be repaired any
>more than a disposable cigarette lighter is made to be refilled. They
>burn out, you toss' em, and buy another one.
Well, not quite. You'll have a motherboard problem with Packard Bell, Compaq
and the like -- but many use "generic" motherboards; thus a Baby AT case
would fit anything from a 286 to a Pentium whatever (btw, shouldn't a P5 be
called a Pentium Pro Lite?)
Floppy disks, of course, have been standardized since the original PC, both
in interface and form factor; EIDE/SCSI for hard disks, IDE for CD-ROM's.
I upgrade PC's much of the time (probably sell 10 used systems/upgrades to 1
new system) and can tell you that upgrading _is_ viable in the PC world.
As I recall, there's a little app around someplace that allows you to put
whatever you want on the Wyse front panel display.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PG Manney [SMTP:manney@nwohio.com]
> Sent: Monday, November 17, 1997 10:29 AM
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
> Subject: Re: New Definiton REQUIRED
>
> > another weird feature on Wyse 286 that can show time and
> >date, mhz display like 8mhz, 12mhz and backlighted! :)
>
> Hey, I just had one of those come in for repair! The hard drive table aldo
> has double digit numbers, something I've never seen before.
>
At 18:20 11/18/97 +0000, Hotze wrote:
>....pretty soon, we'll be getting in to a
>time where the words "IBM Compatible" are going to get replaced with "PC."
The
>fact is, there are just too darn many 386s to contemplate... we have a few
>options... (1) Allow only the first/last (IE Deskpro 386 first, I don't know
>about last)....
Nuh uh. ALR 386 first, Compaq second. The ALR 386 is one of the most
collectible of all Intel boxes.
__________________________________________
Kip Crosby engine(a)chac.org
http://www.chac.org/index.html
Computer History Association of California
I own two complete IBM 5100 systems.
My original machine was fully loaded with 64k and both APL and BASIC in
ROM. It also had the serial I/O card and I used to remotely access the
machine with an ASR33 teletype at 110(?) baud. With the proprietary
vertical market software plus the IBM software, I paid about $64,000 in
1975(?), or about a buck a byte.
The other, purchased ten years later for spares, has BASIC only and I
forget the amount of memory.
I also have the entire library of IBM software released for these
machines and all documentation including the service manuals.
I have two external tape drives and two printers as well and boxes and
boxes of tapes.
I wrote a fully-funcional word-processor in APL for use with the "Paper
Tiger"-series printers. I wrote over 100 user manuals on this machine
and output camera-ready copy.
If anyone out there needs any info or assistance with the 5100, perhaps
I can help.
--
Michael.
-----------------------------------------------+------------------------
Michael Gillespie | Voice/Fax 204.943.9000
President, Telecommunities Canada Inc. | michaelg(a)tc.ca
President, The Gray Research Group | michaelg(a)gray.mb.ca
Project Manager, Blue Sky Community Networks | michaelg(a)freenet.mb.ca
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