The 9885 is listed in HP documentation as the 12732A flexible disk system, with a capacity of 500 K bytes per drive, 4 drives maximum. It is supported under RTE-II, RTE-III, RTE-IV, RTE-IVB, and RTE-M. It is not supported under RTE-L or RTE-XL. I assume its also supported under RTE-6VM, but my documentation is not quite new enough to list that possibility. HP does have a boot from for this subsystem, but I think that the only OS that can fit and run from the 9885 is RTE-M, a 'memory only' version of RTE that was used to host dedicated applications where little or no program development work was done. Think of this (the M version) as a 'run time' version of RTE. Often RTE-M would boot off one of the tiny tape drives common to many HP terminals. In fact, the only mass storage systems for RTE-M are the 9885 and the terminal tape cartridge drives. RTE-M looks kind of interesting, in that it does support Basic/1000M, so program development using Basic is an option (but no Fortran compiler, assembler, etc). RTE-M looks like an excellent choice for building a small system around the newer HP minicomputers (M and E series). The only problem would be finding the distribution media and documentation. But I'm not aware of any place to get HP operating systems, or what their legal status is today. I've got bits and peices of some HP OS's, but nothing operational. In many cases, collectors find partial systems without 'real' operating systems, or even supportable disk systems to hold those operating systems. In these cases, what is a collector to do? On the HP machines, there is an easy alternative, HP's stand-alone basic. But programming in Basic may cause some collectors indigestion. And what if your chosen machine is not an HP?? There is a way to get your chosen vintage machine running something usable without having to run the original operating systems. You can elect to 'bootstrap' the machine with a small, simple, custom operating system and programming language. Sounds impractical? Too much work? Look how small CP/M is. This is something a person could write. More importantly, a more portable option exists, something akin to Forth (punishment for not liking basic enough in my opinion). Small threaded interpreters can be build fairly easily, and are small and powerful tools. Once a small kernel of the language is running, you can quickly expand the system to provide whatever hardware support and features you choose. The book 'Threaded Interpretive Languages' by R. G. Loeliger describes an indirect threaded interpreter for the Z80, but first resorts to describing a 'generic computer' to host a very simple threaded inner interpreter. The generic machine described in chapter 3 is ~very~ similar to the HP1000 machines, assuming you write simple subroutines to implement the parameter and return address stacks. Using this approach, a very usable OS/programming language can be implemented in less than 4K words. Best of all it is extensible, features can be added incrementally. (as you find more hardware and documentation!) Whats needed to attempt such a thing? Well, documentation on any hardware you wish to support, and some form of assembler, either native or (preferably) a cross assembler. Some method of getting the output from the assembler into memory is also key, we all love our front panels, but we need something more practical. Getting back to HP machines for a moment, these needs are easily met. Simple loader software can be used to load code into memory through the TTY interface board, or better still through a parallel interface using the stock BBL loader. The assembler on the HP2100 archive site has been succesfully compiled into wintel executable code, and it works very well. Loader programs can be used to transfer data from a PC into the HP easily enough, or a reader emulator can be used as well. Other vintage platforms may not be so well supported in terms of cross assemblers and ultra-simple boot methods, but any box you can hand-code well enough to talk to the world through whatever interface you have can be made to work here. I should also mention emulation here. Like it or not, you don't have to have the actual hardware to do a lot of this work (this means that people can help develop without being blessed by the glow of the front panel). Personally, Forth is highly unreadable and sufficiently bizzare that I've never learned much about it, other than being facinated by its architecture. Its just so small, and you get so much functionality out of so little code. This efficiency of design has got to appeal to people trying to do something useful with vintage machines. Most often the vintage machine you find is not already booting whatever OS was once available. So whats the least-effort to getting such a machine running as it should? While implementing real Forth on a vintage machine is probably a very good approach to bootstrapping ancient iron thats not already booting an OS, Forth is just too strange for me. I'm taking the option presented in 'Threaded Interpretive Languages', and writing my own threaded interpreter. Because my collection spans HP machines from the bitty 2114 up through E-series boxes, I'm going to write my own operating system and language using the base instructions common to all these machines. I'm assembling the code using a wintel port of HPASM from Jeff's site, and transfering my code to the hardware using a tape reader emulator. But after reading of others trying to 'bootstrap' older HP machines, I have to ask if it would not be better for such 'bootstrapping' projects to be done by teams of list members? This way a semi-standardized 'new vintage OS' could be developed specifically for easy portability to any ancient iron lacking reasonable OS support. Individual users can then alter of replace the languaged dictionary to suite their tastes. Anyone interested in a threaded interpreter for old HP boxes? Maybe something that can run in all those 4K 2114's that can't run HP Basic?

in fst format, which is some sort of tape dump/backup format that I cannot (yet) decode, so I'm not sure how to build a loadable system... The manuals are also available... If anyone knows how to decode this to build bootable media, please let me know. I believe this is under a sort of hobbist license (i.e. noncommercial use...) I would assume that all RTE systems post RTE-IV needed a 21MX style computer (1000 series...) with the memory management option installed (on later computers it may not have been an 'option'...) Please correct me if I'm wrong... Bill McDermith ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Shannon" <bshannon(a)tiac.net> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 8:37 AM Subject: Re: More HP1000's, and bootstrapping old systems in general. with ...snip...snip...snip... _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com