Computer speedometers

Re: The PA-RISC based HP 3000s have a "speedometer" built-in to the MPE/iX operating system. The older models have a LED display that usually shows FxFF, with "x" alternating between "F" and a value in the range 0..9,A which indicates (when multiplied by 10) the CPU's percent busy. Thus, F2FF means "CPU is 20% busy". (The alternating between FxFF and FFFF gave the user a means of knowing whether or not the OS had frozen, otherwise one couldn't tell if a constant FxFF was meaningful :) The newer models lost the LED display, sigh, but the info is available at the operator's request ... in which case it will be displayed on the 25th line (the "status line") of the operator console. (On topic, because the 3000/930 was released in 1986.) -- Stan Sieler sieler at allegro.com www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html