25 Feb
1999
25 Feb
'99
4:07 a.m.
HP200C: A Guide to Time Shared Basic
This was my very first Computer Book and ended up reading cover to cover.
Access was through an ASR33 teletype through leased line to a company
called OTIS (Oregon Total Information Service?).
I managed to do a lot of programming the first couple of years but I've
had folks tell me I was jaded for learning Basic first.
The verdict is still out....
George Rachor
=========================================================
George L. Rachor Jr. george(a)racsys.rt.rain.com
Beaverton, Oregon http://racsys.rt.rain.com
United States of America Amateur Radio : KD7DCX
On Thu, 25 Feb 1999, James Willing wrote:
Some somewhat regional information to follow, but
valid as to the fates of
some past friends (systems)...
On Thu, 25 Feb 1999, Rick Bensene wrote:
Jay West (in a wonderfully informative message
about HP systems) wrote:
Ah, yes... I remember it well. As to its fate, I can offer a few more
tidbits...
The METCOM system, known as "Darlene" to its friends, met its final
(publically anyway) end at a sealed bid county auction in the early 1980s.
Timesharing was no longer considered a 'practical' solution to teaching
computing in the schools, with the increasing presence of the PC...
"Overhead, expense, and reliability" were some other terms bandied around.
I attended the auction along with some friends who hoped to have a shot at
obtaining the system. We all thought it would be really cool to have.
That hope did not last long...
The system was last seen in numerous pieces in the building where the
auction was held (some miles away from the former 'Computer Center'). One
of the (washing machine style) disk drives had a rather large 'ding' in
the side, indicating that the people who moved it did not apparently have
much of a clue... B^{
The system was auctioned "whole", or so they said... What we were able to
idenfity in the lot was the main cabinet with the two CPUs, a tape drive,
and two standing hard drives.
The ASR-35 console TTY, and modem banks were nowhere to be seen...
As I recall, most of us just wandered out of the room when the winning bid
was announced. As I recall it was somewhere around $3800...
(far too much back then for a bunch of kids...)
Hung around for a time watching bids on some other items, never did get
anything out of it... And never did see the system again... (or find out
who won the bid)
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
Generally the HP2000 designation meant the system
was running TSB
(Timeshare
BASIC) which is my particular target of collecting since it was the first
computer system I ever learned. If the same hardware was running DOS/RTE,
etc. is was called an HP 1000.
So, does anyone out there know of, or have, any of the HP 2000 Timeshared
BASIC systems *running*? This is what I learned on also.
The county educational services district purchased an original HP 2000B
TSB system. Over the years, it was upgraded to a C, then C', then E, F, and
finally ACCESS. The last I know of the system being in service was in the
early
1980's. I've tried to track down what happened to it, but every lead has
resulted
in a dead end.