Anyone still playing with HP 1000/2000 minis?

[Brent Hilpert]

On 2014-Nov-03, at 1:57 AM, Tim Riker wrote:
> On 10/11/2014 04:06 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote:
>> On 2014-Oct-11, at 1:57 AM, Rik Bos wrote:
>>>>> Just noticed recently that the source from 1970 for the single-user HP BASIC
>>>> has appeared on bitsavers (thanks Al), so working on getting that going now.
>>>> Nice to have some period software for the machine.
> 
> Direct link?

This is the link to what (I) was referring to:
	http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/hp/2116/BASIC_Jan70/


>>>> That was OCR'd from a listing that purchased from HP in 1971 so that I could
>>>> hack on the BASIC  interpreter that was running on the 2114 at my high school.
> 
> Same source? Got a link?

There is a missing attribution in the reply quoting, the reply about the source and OCRing was from Guy Sotomayor - Shiresoft <ggs at shiresoft.com>.

The BASIC being mentioned and linked above however, is a single-user interpreter, not a multi-user or time-shared system ..doesn't sound like the sys you are looking for.

8" floppies on a 2114 sounds very unusual, I've never heard of support for floppies for the 2116/15/14 procs - floppies came after the prime market life of those procs. Don't know if a later I/O floppy interface would have been backwards compatible to the early procs.


>>> Probably Educational Basic HP24160A, there was a special configuration of
>>> the  HP 2114A/B combined with the HP 2748A paper tape reader and a HP 2760A
>>> optical mark card reader and a HP 2752A Teleprinter delivered to schools and
>>> Universities.
>>> The whole combination without the Teleprinter was built in a 19"cabinet with
>>> a small drawer at the top, it's purpose was to learn children and students
>>> Basic.
>>> The Educational basic differs from stand-alone HP 24000A Basic, it can read
>>> a special kind of marked cards (HP 02760-9051) with basic commands on it.
>> 
>> Haven't seen any mention or support for the card reader in either the interpreter or the PBS (Prepare Basic System) device configuration .. seems to be the standard version.
>> 
>> I remember the special BASIC mark-sense cards from the 9830 + 9869A/7261A card reader at the high school I went to.
> 
> Penfield High, NY where I attended, had a 19" cabinet with an HP-2114B
> (B?) and a ASR-33 console. There was also an HP-2761A Optical Mark
> reader, and I'm not sure the printer.
> 
> At the time I used it, there were 4 "consoles" running and time slicing
> was done on each line of basic. The card reader was one input, and the
> printer was the output. The ASR-33 was the only interactive terminal the
> previous year, but new this year were two crt serial terminals. They
> were not the HP branded terminals.
> 
> There was a paper tape punch and a reader. The punch was disconnected
> and sitting over on a shelf.
> 
> As I recall there was a dual 8" floppy drive inside the cabinet.
> 
> There was no login on the terminals. Files starting with an exclamation
> point where invisible to directory listings.
> 
> I've not found a time-shared basic that matched this type of
> configuration. Dick Stover (now deceased) was the systems operator for a
> number of different schools in upstate New York that ran similar setups.
> 
> Is the HP24160A you mention a software system? or the bundling of
> specific hardware? both? Is the BASIC multi-user?
> 
> There was a grading program in the system that, as I recall, was
> triggered by a CALL -151 command in basic. Thus a teacher would include
> the magic card that triggered the app, then include a card marked with
> the correct answers, then as many cards to be graded as they liked. I
> don't recall how this was ended. Might have been a special end card. The
> printer would then print a grade report for each card. All other
> processing on the other "consoles" would halt until the grading was
> complete. Then the BASIC time slicing would resume where it left off.
> 
> I have some partial source listings from back then of the D&D program we
> were working on. It used a number of "chained" programs to do: map
> generation, map navigation, battle encounters, inventory management,
> etc. We had functions to pack and unpack date into floats as I don't
> recall the BASIC supporting direct integers.
> 
> I'd be very interested in any source that might be this version of
> BASIC. I've looked at the Montana State University basic, but this does
> not look like what I recall. Sources for some of this up on my site:
> 
> http://rikers.org/hp2100/
> 
> check out the "msu" directory.
> 
> I have:
> 
> HP-2116A (non-functional, yes, that's an A, not a B or a C)
> HP-2100A (not powered up)
> HP-2108A (functional)
> HP-2112A (functional)
> 
> HP-7900 (broken chassis)
> HP-7901 * 2 (never powered up)
> 
> HP-2748B Paper Tape reader
> HP-2761A Optical Mark Reader
> 
> Geek porn:
> 
> http://rikers.org/gallery/hardware
> 
> I'd trade it all for a functional HP-2114B :) I loved the touch
> sensitive switched on that model. I'm in SLC Utah if anyone wants to see
> any of this.