7 Dec
2007
7 Dec
'07
3:47 p.m.
On Thu, 6 Dec 2007, Tony Duell wrote:
Oh, you rotten sod :-). That is one beautiful machine :-)
I must admit I was basing my comments on the HP9000s that I haev seen
inside. My small collection of 9000/200 machines (9826, 9836, 9816,
9817), the 9000/340 (68030 I think, but with lots of HP custom stuff in
PGA packages round it), the 9000/425 with an external graphics box (the
latter has am i860 in it, but again with custom stuff all round it, ditto
in the machin amchine). and a friend's PA-Risc box (I forget the model
number).
The reason you're a 'rotten sod' is not that I don't wnat to be educated
about machines I've not come across, of course I do. But having looked at
the CE manual on the museum website, I now really want one of those
machines. And I have no chance of finding one :-)
I am probablty being unfair, but I find all the
9000 series after the
9000/200 to be 'boring unix boxes'. Lots of HP custom silicon (some, I
believe have PA-RISC CPUs, the ones that are 68K-based have other HP
custom chips in them). The 9000/200 series hae a few PALs in them, but
they are mostly stadnard chips. And there are some interesting add-on boards
for them, admittedly those can often be used in the 9000/300 series too.
You are unfair, just have a look at the 9000/840 (1986/87). We have one (still running 24/7), together with a 7978 and several 7935
drives (the system's
running from SCSI disks though). The interesting parts of this machine:
1. It's the first PA-RISC machine
2. It's completely TTL (SN74xx, PROMs and memories)
That sounds just the sort of thing I would love.
3. The CPU consists of about half a dozen PCBs
4. It's useful as a bridge between the HP-IB world and the UNIX/Internet
world
As an example, the ALU resides on the EU (execution unit) board and is built
from SN74AS181 (eight of them for 32 bits). Another example: the ECC
Nice. How large physcially are the CPU boards?
controller on the memory controller board is a (rarely
found) SN74ALS632,
IIRC. The other CPU boards are the CA (cache), TL (table lookaside) and
IU (instruction unit).
The only custom chips are found on the I/O interfaces (bus interface IC
for the CIO) and the FPU boards (the FPU consists of two ICs embedded into
a plethora of TTL ICs).
BTW many I/O boards have intelligent subsystems on them, e.g. the terminal
MUX board is a Z80 system with SIOs etc., the ethernet board has a MC68000
That, I believe, is treu of even the 9000/200 machines. The SRM (HP
custom network) card has a Z80 and some peripheral chips on it, I think
there was at least one 'intellegent' serial card fro those machines
(98268???)
(as many ethernet boards at that time), and the HP-IB
board has a HP 1TL1
IC (is there a datasheet available?).
IIRC, that's a 'Medusa'. I have the pinout, but not the register map or
anything like that. It was used in quite a few 'advanced' HPIB devives --
the high-speed DIO HPIB card has one on it, as do some of the disk/tape
peripherals.
There is rumoured to be a techncial manual for the 9000/200 series. Not
with full schematics of course, but with enough information for people
whoe are designing new interface cards, writing drivers for them, or
proting a new OS to the machines. I have never seen it, I have never met
anyone who's seen it. And yes I want to read it.
I wish I had a *real* service manual/schematics for this machine...
If I eve manage to find one, schematics would follow some time later :-)
-tony