At 02:33 PM 1/2/98 -0800, you wrote:
>Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net> wrote:
>> Frank knows his HPs! I know the 200 series pretty well but he's got all
>> of them down pat.
>
>I've been doing stuff with HPs for over 20 years now (mostly with
>3000s and HP PCs), and some of it stuck. But I've never worked with
>Series 200s so don't know that much about them, just what I've picked
>up here and there. And I still think I have a lot to learn.
Don't we all! I swear it seems like the more I learn, the more
questions I have!
>
>Why do I know about Series 500s? In 1989 I took a job at a little
>company called The Wollongong Group, supporting a product for the HP
>3000 called WIN/TCP for MPE/V. Little did I know, they also had a
>product for the HP 9000 Series 500s called, straightforwardly enough,
>WIN/TCP for HP 9000 Series 500. They expected me to support that too
>-- after all it's all HP stuff, it's all weird/how different can it
>be? (yep, that's how they thought) -- so I did.
>
Sounds familar. I went from Pershing II missiles with RADAR guidance
to a 5 foot long anti-aircraft racket with active IR quidance. No one
could see any difference in them ether (specially my bosses).
>Somewhere along the way I decided I wanted a windowing environment
>that could handle HP terminal emulation on my desk, and after fooling
>around a bit with PCs I saw some guy up in Berkeley trying to be rid
>of a 9000 Series 320. So I bought it, and it was good. That sat
>there 'til early 1994 when I got retreaded into a Windows device
>driver kind of guy. Now I guess it's part of my collection -- it sits
>in the storage closet.
We'll have to compare collections.
>
>> FWIW the 9000 Vectra series computers (or some of them anyway) used
>> 80286 CPUs and were MS-DOS compatable.
>
>9000 Vectra? My recollection of the Vectra family is that it's all
>IBM-compatibles (well, mostly, I remember the earliest Vectras and
>they were about 99% if you allowed for the HP-isms that snuck in, like
>the HP-HIL interface for the keyboard and mouse, the HP keyboard with
>the f1-f8 keys across the top, and the funky HP Multimode MDA/CGA
That's them.
>display adapter) and never was a part of the 9000 family.
>
Well that's what the 1987 HP catalog says. Granted they're as different
as day and night.
>Though I think I remember something about a coprocessor card (set?) you
>could stick in ISA slot(s) to run Rocky Mountain BASIC. Of course HP
>would have sold that in/for Vectra boxes.
THAT sounds interesting! I like to get one of those boards.
>
>> NOW My turn. Does anyone know exactly what a 9000 217 model is? I found
>> one but I've neverheard of it before and it's not in any of my catalogs.
>
>Every once in a while I see a flavor of 9000/200 that is built into or
>around an HP 2382 terminal housing: small, beige skin, brown bezel around
>9" monochrome CRT. I think some of the ones I've seen were hooked up
>to 91[23]x disk drives, and can't remember whether the processor was in
>a similarly-sized box or in the terminal. Could that be it?
That sounds more like the 9000 216 aka 9816. Look at
"
http://www.intellistar.net/~rigdonj/hp9816.jpg" and see if that looks like
what you're thinking of. This was a box about the size of a 9133 disk
drive and had 8? expansion slots in the back and no attached monitor or
keybaord. it said 9000 217 on the front top corner.
BTW Do you know where I can get a keyboard for a 9816? Do you know if any
of the other keyboards will work on it? I have a bunch of HP-HIL keyboards
and they use that same style connector. I'm not sure if it's the same size
or number of contacts though. I do know that the 9816 keyboard has one
latch on top and the HIL keybaord has two latchs, one on each side.
>
>I think the HP Integral PC was also the HP 9000/207 though I don't know
>if it was ever sold under that name.
I have heard it called a 9807, ONCE. It's also shown as a 9807 in the
'87 catalog. The IPC is one of my favorites! I have two of them and lots
of software. If you run across any IPCs or accessories or software, I'M
INTERESTED!
>
>-Frank McConnell "I want my MPE" (w/apologies to Dire Straits)
> <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
Joe
>
Received on Fri Jan 02 1998 - 20:24:02 GMT
