HP 64000 with 80186 emulator?

There was a prototype of the 64000 with a 5MB hard drive, but I don't know if it was ever produced. The original 64000 benchtops had a tape drive (DC100? DC300? Can't remember, IIRC it was the same drive used in the 26xx terminals, but a different data format on the tape, of course :-) and a later option had two 5.25 floppy drives in place of the tape drive. The whole idea was to put several 64000s on one "large" disk drive using the HP-IB port on the back. The resulting arrangement was called a "cluster" in the HP manuals. You could also hook up a standard HP-IB printer to the cluster... I seem to remember some mumbo-jumbo where the disc had to be HP-IB ID 0 and the printer ID 1, but that may have just been the early devices. We used 7920s (50MB) and 7925s (125MB) until the winchester types were available (7914, etc.) The 64000s would boot from the common disk. You might be able to locate some of those around... 7906 with the HP-IB option should also work, but you would probably have better luck locating a CS-80 drive like a 7912/7914/etc. If it has floppies (like the "portable" version) you can boot it from floppy, if you have them... The ones for the portable unit should boot in a crock. (You could also put the "portable" (dragable?) unit on a benchtop cluster and it would boot from the cluster if there wasn't a boot floppy in the drive.) Actually, you need the base OS to boot the unit and the 80186 emulator code. Surely someone on this list has the system tapes for a 64000 laying around... Good luck... Bill SHAUN RIPLEY wrote: