HP Integral Re: the new Apple iMac

From: Frank McConnell <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
Date: Sat May 9 11:09:19 1998

Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net> wrote:
> Not exactly, it has a built-in floppy drive that you can boot from, or
> you can use an external drive on the HP-IB. >BUT< they also had an
> optional ROM that contained an entire HP-UX system. HP called it a
> software engineering ROM. From what i've been told they're extremely rare.
> HP also made another ROM that contained a complete HP Technical BASIC in it.

It doesn't boot from any kind of disks, as near as I can tell -- just
auto-mounts them and hooks them into the RAM-resident filesystem. And
it doesn't buffer writes, so it's safe to dismount stiffies with the
eject button.

And having looked at the HP-UX 5.x manuals, "entire HP-UX system"
means "that subset supported on the IPC". It's pretty cut-down but
usable in a single-user stand-alone non-networked (not even UUCP) PC
sort of way.

-Frank McConnell
Received on Sat May 09 1998 - 11:09:19 BST