I have an HP 9817 and 9133D disk drive that I am trying to get going. The 9817 has a
98204B composite video card. I can mess with the settings of a composite monitor enough to
barely read the text on the screen, which indicates that the machine is trying to boot
from device A. I tried to make an image of the hard drive in the 9133D using Dave's
MFM emulator, but the drive is pretty much toast and I wasn't able to recover much
from it. If I connect the drive to the computer, it fails to boot and goes into BASIC.
I do not have a compatible HP monitor or HIL keyboard to use with the machine. I was
planning on building a PS2 to HIL converter, but having an actual keyboard would be far
easier. Likewise, having a monitor would be easier than abusing a normal composite display
into working.
It looks like there were a bunch of compatible monitors back in the day. The 35721 and
35731B are mentioned on the HP Museum website.