HP 2000 Time Shared BASIC Memories

From: Rick Bensene <rickb_at_pail.enginet.com>
Date: Thu Feb 25 10:31:37 1999

Jay West (in a wonderfully informative message about HP systems) wrote:

> Generally the HP2000 designation meant the system was running TSB
> (Timeshare
> BASIC) which is my particular target of collecting since it was the first
> computer system I ever learned. If the same hardware was running DOS/RTE,
> etc. is was called an HP 1000.
>
So, does anyone out there know of, or have, any of the HP 2000 Timeshared
BASIC systems *running*? This is what I learned on also.
The county educational services district purchased an original HP 2000B
TSB system. Over the years, it was upgraded to a C, then C', then E, F, and
finally ACCESS. The last I know of the system being in service was in the
early
1980's. I've tried to track down what happened to it, but every lead has
resulted
in a dead end.

I was able to visit the 'computer center' where the machine was kept (more
on this in the story below). It was
a little hole-in-the-wall building about 5 miles from my house. I think
that
it was running in the 2000C configuration when I saw it. It used dual
CPU's (don't remember which ones). According to the operator, one CPU
handled
the I/O stuff (the system had, as I recall, 32 ports, most connected to
Bell 103 modems), and the other 'ran' the BASIC environment. The system had
a washing-machine sized disk drive with removable multi-platter disk packs.
There was also a rack/cabinet about the same size as the rack that the
two CPU's were in that contained a fast drum memory that was used for
swapping store.

Does anyone know if HP still can make available the TSB code? It would be
TOTALLY amazing to get ahold of it, write and emulator for the CPU and
associated hardware on something like a PII 450 running Linux, and *run* TSB
again.
It would be a big project, but chances of finding the real mccoy
seem pretty unlikely nowadays.

Here's a recollection for y'all on the 2000C Timeshared BASIC system.

One day I was reading the TSB manual (wish I still had it, but I think it
ended up coming un-bound because I used it so much, and I think it got
tossed away years ago when I was moving) in an effort to learn any new
tidbits of information.

On the page for the "NAM" command, which was used to attach a name to the
current program in working storage, I noted that it said to NEVER name a
program
with a single comma; i.e. NAM-,

I wondered why this would be. So, I wandered into the terminal room at
our high school, and dialed up the machine (I still remember the phone
number!)
and logged in. I typed in a little program, and typed NAM-, and pressed
RETURN. A linefeed popped back at me. I thought..."well, that was
exciting".

So, I typed LIS and there was my little program as expected. I then
did a CATLIST to dump out my user directory. The CATLIST came back empty.
This was startling, as I *thought* I had a whole bunch of stuff in my
directory.
I then typed the command that would tell you how much (I think it was TIME)
connect time you'd used this session, and how much of your monthly time
quota
you had left. The command came back with really weird answers...and, it
came back with different numbers each time I ran the command. This was VERY
strange. So, I logged off, and re-logged back in, and didn't type NAM-,
and did a CATLIST. There was all my stuff. I typed in NAM-, then did a
CATLIST...
and all my stuff was gone.

I then thought...I wonder if the NAM-, magically transports you to a
different
file area. So, I typed up a little program, gave it a name with the NAM-
command (which seemed to take, and not affect 'where' I was), and SAVed it.
I did a CATLIST. There it was. The interesting thing was that the CATLIST
(which I hadn't really noticed before) said that I had some tremendous
amount
of storage blocks remaining.

Upon noticing this, I thought I'd try CREating a big file, just to see how
much
space I really had available to me. I issued a command to create a 1000
block
file..which was a pretty good-sized file, as I remember. I typed in the
command, and pressed RETURN. There were three other TTY's in our computer
lab, and all were occupied by other students at the time. When I pushed
RETURN,
all the other TTY's quit printing for a second or two...just like the
machine
had crashed (which happened from time to time), but as soon as my terminal
printed it's acknowledging linefeed, they started right back up where they
left off.
Hmmmm...

So, how about a 10000 block file? Well, that took the system a while to
create...and everyone else was 'dead' during that time...no character echo,
output 'froze' at the point where I pressed RETURN on my terminal.

I did a CATLIST...and sure enough, there was my little program, my 1000
block
file, and my 10000 block file. I did a KILL on my 10000 block file, and
that took a bit, and everyone else again froze during the KILL operation.
Too weird. I left it alone for then, and called a friend that night that
went to another school that used the same system, and told him to make sure
that he was logged on at 11AM the next morning, and observe.

At 11AM the next morning, I was logged in, and had done the magic NAM-,.
I asked the system to create a 100000 block file, pressing the RETURN
on the command at 11AM sharp...which *appeared* to make
the system crash, at least from my end. All the other terminals were
'dead'.
About 2 minutes into my create, my terminal (a good old TTY ASR33), along
with
everyone else's chattered a few garbage characters, like these beasts did
when
the carrier dropped. Either the system totally crashed, or the operator
had killed it to reboot. I was a little scared at that point, as I figured
it
was all caused by me. I didn't do any more tinkering after the system came
back
up that day.

My friend called me that evening, and said "Did you do that?". So, I knew
that whatever I was doing, it was system-wide! He wanted to know how I
did
it, but I didn't tell.

I did a few more experiments with this strangeness, but never 'crashed' it
again,
just playing around to see how much resource this 'warped' place that NAM-,
too me to could consume. In this space, I had a larger working storage set,
had virtually unlimited file storage space (I wrote a little program that
would CREate lots and lots of small files), and unlimited connect time.
It seemed that NAM-, sent you off to the 'system overhead' area...where all
resources that weren't in use were available to whomever had executed the
NAM-, command.

After tinkering with it for a while, I decided I should tell my instructor
about
it. The instructor and I were very close, and I figured this was something
that
could cause problems if the word got out about it. He was amazed..and
immediately
called the operator of the system, and arranged a meeting so we could tell
them
what was going on. We arranged a meeting in an evening after 'prime time'
so I could demonstrate this. The operator was stunned...it would be
terrible
if the word about this got out...people could 'wedge' the machine pretty
much at will. Apparently, a call was made to HP the next morning, and there
were
HP folks there the next day, and within a couple of days, the NAM-, command
would result in something like "ILLEGAL FORMAT".

According to our system operator, from what was told to her by the
HP engineers, was that the the NAM-, command was a purposely written-in
'back door' that was put into the TSB code. It had to have been known
about
by HP, because of the mention of not using a name of ',' in the manual.
In any case, the back door was closed, at least on our system.

I made a point of checking, when we upgraded to the C', E, F, and ACCESS
systems
to check the NAM-, to see if it worked. It never did again.

Sorry for the long message, but I thought it'd be of some interest to those
who used these wonderful old systems.

Best wishes,
Rick Bensene
Received on Thu Feb 25 1999 - 10:31:37 GMT