Megan wrote:
[snip...]
It is an HP4972A... Lan Protocol Analyzer
68010 processor
Bootrom 4.0
keyboard
Graphics
HP-IB
HP98628 at 20
2096992 bytes
[snip...]
I'll have to find out what price I might be able
to get it for when/if
it is excessed... it may be beyond me...
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
[snip...]
Megan,
The HP 4972A is an older product (late-80's to early-90's vintage) that
is basically a portable HP 9000 Series 200 workstation with add-on
network analysis hardware. It boots the HP Pascal core OS and then loads
the network analyzer specific software. It was last listed in the 1993
HP catalog, and sold at that time for $21,000 (base price). It is very
flexible in terms of triggering, capturing, and display of captured data
and statistics, but (AFAIK) it is limited to 10 Mbps network speeds.
If you wanted to, you could install HP Workstation Basic, the "full"
version of HP Pascal, and/or perhaps even HPL on this system and
selectively boot into any of them. The internal hard drive is the same
as found in the 9153 series drives, so it is probably in the 10 to 20
MByte range. That means that there's not a lot of room for extraneous
stuff, but you could always attach an external drive to the HP-IB
port...
To give you a rough idea of its worth, I've seen them sold by private
individuals in the $250-$500 range, depending on options, condition,
etc. Dealers ask substantially more for them (of course).
Hope this helps!
Stan