Notes on HP3000 WCS Microcode, Series 37 on ebay in Germany

[Warner Losh]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 9:19 AM Lee Courtney via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> "Was Lee Courtney involved with the APL 3000 project?" - unfortunately no I
> was not. Just RTE on the 1000 and later MPE on PA-RISC. All I know is that
> there was microcode support required to run APL on Series II/III
> micro-architecture machines. That microcode was not moved to later
> micro-architectures (Series 3x, 4x, 6x, 7x) so there was no APL available.
> I don't think HP had enough customers using APL to justify the effort. Too
> bad because was an innovative APL.
>

Why was microcode support required to make APL work? What did it enable
that couldn't be done in other ways?

Thanks!

Warner


> Stan Sieler et al are trying to get APL\3000 up and running on an emulated
> 3000 via SIMH. He's CC'd here and can comment.
>
> Al - it would be a Very Good Thing to get those APL ROMS dumped when
> possible.
>
> Lee Courtney
>
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 6:04 AM Al Kossow via cctalk <
> cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>
> > On 9/16/20 5:30 AM, Rodney Brown via cctalk wrote:
> >
> > > It's possible that one of the SYSWCS64 files may match the assembly
> > listing on bitsavers, but that listing could allow guessing the
> > > architecture, assuming horizontal microcode and matching against the HP
> > 3000 stack machine instruction set it implements.
> > >
> >
> > I suspect the listing is for this machine
> > https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102691253
> >
> > I remember looking at the microcode boards in it at one point, and it had
> > APL roms
> > Attempting to dump them isn't possible right now.
> >
> > Was Lee Courtney involved with the APL 3000 project?
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Lee Courtney
> +1-650-704-3934 cell
>