26 Mar
2001
26 Mar
'01
4:59 a.m.
Hi,
I'm new to the group. Does anyone have any information on the old HP
9845 desktop computers, specifically, if any working units still exist?
I have manuals and a bunch of old software, including some extremely
high-end games, both on 8" floppy and on tape. I'd love to at least be
able to pull off some listings or get some of the data transferred to a
current medium.
Thanks.
RT
26 Mar
26 Mar
5:37 a.m.
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28 Mar
28 Mar
1:11 a.m.
At 08:37 PM 3/26/01 +0100, you wrote:
I have one of the disk drives (9885 IIRC), but no real information on it.
And I remember there being an HP custom 40 pin chip on one of the boards
that looked to be a CPU type thing.
I think I have manual for the 9885 here somewhere. I don't remember
which manual though. AIR The 9885 uses the HP 98032 option 085 parallel
interface. I'm pretty sure I have one of thm here too but I've never tried
to use it.
Joe
4:47 a.m.
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26 Mar
26 Mar
6:09 a.m.
I have a 9845 but it shares a common problem - the monitor is missing! I'm
told they are the first thing to go and much harder to replace than finding
a 9845 in the first place.
I was told by the HP experts on this list when I first asked (a year or two
ago) that there is no way known to hook up an external monitor in place of
the original that plugged into those two special ports on the top of the
9845. But you would think that this monitor was basically a standard TTL or
analogue monitior of some sort and that someone might have the technical
details to wire a replacement from the plugs? A bit hard to use without the
monitor unfortunately and in 1980 this was my most DESIRED computer, so I
would love to get this one going again.
Phil
----- Original Message -----
From: RebelTerry <RebelTerry(a)home.net>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 4:59 AM
Subject: HP 9845s?
Hi,
I'm new to the group. Does anyone have any information on the old HP
9845 desktop computers, specifically, if any working units still exist?
I have manuals and a bunch of old software, including some extremely
high-end games, both on 8" floppy and on tape. I'd love to at least be
able to pull off some listings or get some of the data transferred to a
current medium.
Thanks.
RT
8:44 a.m.
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28 Mar
28 Mar
1:21 a.m.
At 11:44 PM 3/26/01 +0100, you wrote:
I believe the 9845 monitors are raster scanned but I'm not positive.
HP did build some vector scanned monitors but I think they were mainly used
as video plotters and I don't think any of them were used as the main
display on any of their computers.
What do the connectors look like? How many pins, and so on?
The monitor mounts on top of the 9845 by means of two struts. Each strut
has a circuit board in it with about a dozen contacts that stick up and
mate with connectors inside the monitor. I have no idea of the pin out on
the connectors. BTW there are at least four different monitors for the
9845. One of them is color and the others are mono-chrome. One of the
monochrome ones is text only and another is text and graphics. I'm not sure
what different about the other monochrome one but I think it has higher
resolution. I don't know if the CPUs that are used with the various
monochrome monitors are different of not but the one for the color monitor is.
9845. But you would think that this monitor was
basically a standard TTL or
analogue monitior of some sort and that someone might have the technical
My guess (based on the date of the machine) is that it's most likely to
be either a TTL monitor with separate syncs or normal composite monitor.
THe only HP video display of that period that I know about is the HP1350,
and that uses a special _vector_ monitor. I can't believe the 9845 is
similar, though.
Alas the 98x5 series have a lot of custom silicon in them, so figuring
out things like this can be a long and slow job....
Amen!
Joe
4:51 a.m.
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26 Mar
26 Mar
12:49 p.m.
On 2001/03/27 at 6:09am +1000, "Phil Guerney" <guerney(a)bigpond.com>
wrote:
I was told by the HP experts on this list when I first
asked (a year or two
ago) that there is no way known to hook up an external monitor in place of
the original that plugged into those two special ports on the top of the
9845.
OK, I got curious and found the manuals. The short answer: you're screwed.
But you would think that this monitor was basically a
standard TTL or
analogue monitior of some sort and that someone might have the technical
details to wire a replacement from the plugs?
Major parts of the display logic (character generator etc.) are in the
monitor case, not the main box.
A bit hard to use without the
monitor unfortunately and in 1980 this was my most DESIRED computer, so I
would love to get this one going again.
Apparently, you need only attach a "turn-on fixture", part 09845-66547,
to the left monitor leg, execute "PRINT ALL IS 0", and press the 'PRT
ALL' key: then you can use the machine with the printer alone... yeah,
good luck finding one.
--
Kevin Schoedel
schoedel(a)kw.igs.net
3:50 p.m.
Thanks for the feedback!
A friend told me he saw an HP BASIC to C translator somewhere. If
someone has a 9845 that could read my disks (or maybe tapes) and
print them out on the built-in thermal printer, I could at least OCR the
listing and try recreating the code in C.
Guess that's the next best thing to finding a living -45.
Another problem is our game stuff was all very high end. Even if I
found a working machine, would it have the Fast Language Processor,
and the I/O, Graphics, Assembly Language, and other ROMs we had?
So, can anyone help me pull off the listings? (I'll send you free copies
of the games, once they work!)
Thanks.
RT
27 Mar
27 Mar
10:03 a.m.
Re:
A friend told me he saw an HP BASIC to C translator
somewhere. If
someone has a 9845 that could read my disks (or maybe tapes) and
print them out on the built-in thermal printer, I could at least OCR the
Or, you could run HP BASIC on a Windows system.
Check http://www.htbasic.com/htbwindows.html
A demo of something...perhaps the same product, perhaps
not, is available from Agilent at
http://ftp.agilent.com/pub/mpusup/pc/index.html
(see bullet 3)
Stan Sieler sieler(a)allegro.com
www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html www.allegro.com/sieler
26 Mar
26 Mar
9:17 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Schoedel <schoedel(a)kw.igs.net>
>I was told by the HP experts on this list when I
first asked (a year or
two
>ago) that there is no way known to hook up an
external monitor in place
of
>the original that plugged into those two special
ports on the top of the
>9845.
Apparently, you need only attach a "turn-on
fixture", part 09845-66547,
to the left monitor leg, execute "PRINT ALL IS 0", and press the 'PRT
ALL' key: then you can use the machine with the printer alone... yeah,
good luck finding one.
9:20 p.m.
Great, a way out.
To the list in general - if anyone ever comes across a HP Part 09845-66547,
pleeeeese get it for me!
Thanks
Phil
----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Schoedel <schoedel(a)kw.igs.net>
::On 2001/03/27 at 6:09am +1000, "Phil Guerney" <guerney(a)bigpond.com>
wrote:
::I was told by the HP experts on this list when I first asked (a year or
two
::ago) that there is no way known to hook up an external monitor in place of
::the original that plugged into those two special ports on the top of the
::9845.
: Apparently, you need only attach a "turn-on fixture", part 09845-66547,
: to the left monitor leg, execute "PRINT ALL IS 0", and press the 'PRT
: ALL' key: then you can use the machine with the printer alone... yeah,
: good luck finding one.
PS Sorry for the previous post that went without my own words added to the
quote. I'm not handling Outlook Express real well the last 24 hours.
28 Mar
28 Mar
2:09 a.m.
At 09:20 PM 3/27/01 +1000, you wrote:
Great, a way out.
To the list in general - if anyone ever comes across a HP Part 09845-66547,
pleeeeese get it for me!
Thanks
Phil
If you come across ANY parts that have the 09845-xxxxx part number grab
them! The 09845 prefix means that the part is for a 9845. The same
applies to most HP part numbers so grab any part that starts with
098xx-xxxxx since it will be for one of the 9800 series calculators.
Joe
4:56 a.m.
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27 Mar
27 Mar
4:02 a.m.
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28 Mar
28 Mar
1:32 a.m.
At 09:49 PM 3/26/01 -0500, you wrote:
On 2001/03/27 at 6:09am +1000, "Phil Guerney"
<guerney(a)bigpond.com> wrote:
Interesting. I wonder if you could do the same thing with an external
monitor connected via HP-IB interface or if a monitor (or the turn-on
fixture) is required for the system to "boot"?
Joe
I was told by the HP experts on this list when I
first asked (a year or two
ago) that there is no way known to hook up an external monitor in place of
the original that plugged into those two special ports on the top of the
9845.
OK, I got curious and found the manuals. The short answer: you're screwed.
But you would think that this monitor was
basically a standard TTL or
analogue monitior of some sort and that someone might have the technical
details to wire a replacement from the plugs?
Major parts of the display logic (character generator etc.) are in the
monitor case, not the main box.
A bit hard to use without the
monitor unfortunately and in 1980 this was my most DESIRED computer, so I
would love to get this one going again.
Apparently, you need only attach a "turn-on fixture", part 09845-66547,
to the left monitor leg, execute "PRINT ALL IS 0", and press the 'PRT
ALL' key: then you can use the machine with the printer alone... yeah,
good luck finding one.
--
Kevin Schoedel
schoedel(a)kw.igs.net
4:52 a.m.
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26 Mar
26 Mar
11:43 a.m.
On 2001/03/26 at 10:59am -0800, RebelTerry wrote:
I'm new to the group. Does anyone have any
information on the old HP
9845 desktop computers, specifically, if any working units still exist?
I have one that works, except that I haven't looked at the tape drives
and the rollers have most likely melted. I'm pretty sure at least one
other list regular has one.
At 8:37pm +0100 2001/03/26, Tony Duell wrote:
How strange is the HP disk format? I know that the HP
disk drive could at
least read IBM3740 disks. Were the HP disks also FM recorded?
I have one of the disk drives (9885 IIRC), but no real information on it.
And I remember there being an HP custom 40 pin chip on one of the boards
that looked to be a CPU type thing.
I have the 9885 service manual, which I'm pretty sure has schematics...
I'll try to get it out and check this weekend.
At 6:09am +1000 2001/03/27, Phil Guerney wrote:
I was told by the HP experts on this list when I first
asked (a year or two
ago) that there is no way known to hook up an external monitor in place of
the original that plugged into those two special ports on the top of the
9845. But you would think that this monitor was basically a standard TTL or
analogue monitior of some sort and that someone might have the technical
details to wire a replacement from the plugs?
I have the service manual for the 9845B too (is yours a B or C?), but
it definitely does not have schematics; it's at the
subassembly-swapping level. It might have the specifications and
pinouts, though; again, I'll try to look it up this weekend. (Someone
remind me privately in a week if I haven't.)
--
Kevin Schoedel
schoedel(a)kw.igs.net
27 Mar
27 Mar
4 a.m.
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1:30 p.m.
Now, how similar is the CPU to the 9825's CPU? If
it's the same
hybrid, then the I/O bus is reasonably-well documented, e.g. in the 98032
service manual.
According to the HPJournal article, it's similar but not identical. I
remember that it replaces an indirect bit on memory access with an
additional direct address bit, but I don't remember whether the article
says anything about electrical differences.
In the 9825, the I/O modules plug into a little
backplane with a ribbon
cable linking it to the rest of the machine (tape controller, CPU board,
KDP interface [1]) Since the backplane is just connectors, the pinout of
the ribbon cable is trivial to deduce. If that's what links to the
'monitor' in the 9845, then it should be possible to figure out what is
going on.
The 9845 does have the same I/O backplane, but I don't believe the
monitor connections are the same. The monitor sits on two 'legs', each
with a card edge connector; some of the alphanumeric display logic sits
in the main box under the left leg and connects to the rest on the left
side of the monitor, while the right side of the monitor holds the
(optional) bitmap memory and connects through the right leg. (The
alphanumeric display runs off a display list, not a rectangular buffer;
the I/O processor alternately fills two single-line buffers, and from a
quick glance at the block diagram, *those* are in the main box.) It
might not actually be too difficult to figure things out -- at least
what the turn-on fixture is -- but I don't have time right now to look
at it or read the whole manual.
--
Kevin Schoedel
schoedel(a)kw.igs.net
28 Mar
28 Mar
4:12 a.m.
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1:25 a.m.
At 08:43 PM 3/26/01 -0500, you wrote:
On 2001/03/26 at 10:59am -0800, RebelTerry wrote:
Yeap, I have four of 9845Bs. I'm still looking for a 9845C. (hint,
hint) You should be able to repair the tape drive roller the same way that
you can fix the ones in the HP 85s. The HP 85, 9825, 9845 and all the
other HP 98x5 calculators all use the same basic tape drive.
Joe
I'm new to the group. Does anyone have any
information on the old HP
9845 desktop computers, specifically, if any working units still exist?
I have one that works, except that I haven't looked at the tape drives
and the rollers have most likely melted. I'm pretty sure at least one
other list regular has one.
8670
days inactive
8672
days old
22 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
guerney＠bigpond.com -
RebelTerry＠home.net -
rigdonj＠intellistar.net -
schoedel＠kw.igs.net -
ss＠allegro.com