HP2100A luser questions

[Brent Hilpert]

On 2014-Nov-20, at 11:25 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
> On 11/20/14 11:10 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote:
>> On 2014-Nov-20, at 10:40 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
>>>>> With the configuration I have (assume I can get 32K words of core, and have the I/O cards
>>>>> I listed) what can I run on it?
>>>> Aside from blinkenlight programs, in the not-to-distant future there should be a stand-alone version of HP BASIC available. A friend and I are working on assembling it from source. (There are probably old binaries out there somewhere but I haven't obtained one).
>>>> 
>>> I have the binary tape image for HP BASIC somewhere other than in the core of my HP2116.  The source is up on bitsavers scanned (and OCR'd) from a listing that I have had since 1971.
>> Indeed, that's the source we're working from (we spoke of this on the list a few weeks ago).
>> 
>> I've actually extracted (an almost complete) machine code / binary image from the assembly output listings you provided on bitsavers, but it's more interesting to fulfil a complete assembly from the source, so we're waiting for that before trying to load & run.
> I have a cross assembler for the 21xx written in 'C' (I didn't write it) but I don't recall where I got it from.  :-(  It produces an absolute binary image that is suitable for loading using the binary loader.

OK, so 'recent' assembly has already been done - not surprising.
We had a new assembler for the 9830 and figured it would be minor to (back-)convert it for the 21xx. It hasn't been as straightforward as anticipated however, due to the vagaries of the original HP assembler syntax.


> There should be the BASIC tape images on bitsavers.

There are no binaries in the directory with the BASIC source, however it appears the Moffat archive is now on bitsavers and there appears to be a binary there for a version of the interpreter and PBS, along with lots of other early stuff to investigate.

I had found the Moffat pages years ago when they were at his own site, before they were on bitsavers, but as I recall the binaries did not download transparently at that time, that's why I was looking at assembling the source at this time.

(Your) source for BASIC is in the 'pdf' section of bitsavers, beside the hardware manuals:
		http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/hp/2116/BASIC_Jan70/

while the Moffat stuff with binaries is over in the 'software' section:
		http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/HP/paperTapes/JeffM/

I don't know what the story is with the Moffat stuff however, a lot of the file links are dead.
Perhaps Al can comment.


>>> A bunch of tape images for HP stuff is up on bitsavers (http://bitsavers.org/bits/HP/HP_1000_software_collection).  I also came into a fair number of HP paper tapes but I haven't yet had the time to check them against what's on bitsavers to see if I have anything that isn't already there.
>> .. always be interested to hear if there's more period 2116 software, although I'm a little limited as my 2116 currently has only 8KW memory.