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

[Lee Courtney]

I believe it was a performance issue. The APL was so slow without the
microcode assist that the system was unusable.

Lee C.

On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 8:22 AM Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
>
> 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
>>
>

-- 
Lee Courtney
+1-650-704-3934 cell