New find: HP 1000 E series

From: Carlos Murillo <cem14_at_cornell.edu>
Date: Mon Jun 12 15:04:40 2000

Well, today I walked by the auto labs in mech engr and
found that they had finally finished dismantling this
very old combustion/emissions test rig, and the
HP1000 computer that ran the whole show had not been
hauled away yet. Somebody had laid a claim on it
two weeks ago, but since it's so long already and
they haven't showed up, the person who handled the
decomissioning gave it to me.

I have not been able to open the front panel
latch because I do not have the key, so I don't know
what's in the front card cage; all I know is that there
are seven cards, four at the botton and three at the top.
In the back cage there are three jumper cards, two 12821A disk
interfaces,one "time base generator card", and four
cards marked "BACI 12966A" where most of the control
I/O was apparently done. There are two big cards
below the main card cage, but I haven't got to them
yet.

I also got several cables; two of them obviously
connected the disk interface cards to an HPIB
device (an HP 7946 tape drive also came in the lot),
while others went to the test rig, and yet another
seemed to go to a PC being used as a terminal.
Unfortunately, I don't know where the cables were
originally connected, as somebody had already pulled
all cables off the computer.

The machine is very, very dirty; not surprising considering
where it came from (a car shop). The fans are full of
oil-impregnated dust. I don't plan to power
it up until I know more about it. They tell me that
it was still functional about three years ago. Apparently
nobody has touched it since.

So, does anybody have any info on the power supply of this
thing so I can test it before applying power to the
cards? And, where did the console go in this machine?

Best regards,

carlos.
Received on Mon Jun 12 2000 - 15:04:40 BST