HP 9000/226

From: joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Mon Aug 6 10:46:03 2001

At 02:10 AM 8/5/01 +0100, Iggy wrote:
>Went to the junkyard with a mate today and found (well, stepped on) an ugly HP
>something. It's a HP 9000 (Yay!) 226 (?h?),

     aka 9826. It's a 8 MHz 68000 CPU baed system that runs HPL (HP's
version of APL), BASIC or Pascal. Most of the OS were disk based but you
could get them on plug in ROM cards. The really interesting thing about the
OS is that you canhave multiple OSs (and muiltiple versions of the same
one) on the same drive or even multiple drives and you can select the one
that you want it to boot. Very nice for tinkering. All in all, it's not a
bad machine. They're wided used as HP-IB instrument controllers.


>which is a clumsy box with a small
>CRT and a 5?" floppy as well as an integrated keyboard. This unit had been
>retired from the telemonopoly (well, all the stickers date back to that time),
>which ad apparently modified it into some kind of luggable workstation by
>putting a biug brass handle which seems to have come off a door on one side of
>the unit.


     I wonder if the handle is original? There was an option for some kind
of handle from HP but I've never seen one.

>Apart from the handle, it has been equipped with an RS-232 interface
>and additional memory cards, adding up to roughly 1,7 MB.
>The unit powers up fine, the screen looks nice, but the keyboard has been
>massacred, with five or six keys missing.

     That's not a problem, the keys from most of 9000 200 series machi8nes
will fit it.


>But now what? The system is looking
>for a system. What system does it run, and is software obtainable anywhere?


    Yes, software is available. I have it but it's almost impossible to
duplicate. You have to "build" the system from files on the distribution
disks, then you save it as a new system file. The problem is that the
system file is too large to fit on a floppy disk so there's no way to
distribute it except by shipping a complete hard drive with the system
installed on it or by making copies of the original distribution disks. I
have copies of a number of different versions of all three OSs that I've
picked up on hard drives but I've never been able to find ANY original
distribution disks. That leaves shipping complete hard drives as the only
way to distribute OSs for the moment. And we're not taling about just
shipping a bare hard drive. The drives use the HP-IB interface so you need
the entire unit which is about 13 inches square and 5 inches tall and they
weigh about 15 pounds. Your best bet would be to check the surplus
sources in your area and see if you can find any HP hard drives (7957,
7958, 9133, 9134, 9153 etc etc). I've found that frequently they still the
OS on them.

    I used to have a long detailed article about the HP 9000 at my website
but my ISP deleted them. You may be able to find them in the cache at
google or one of the other search engines. Search for "HP 9000 200 series
computers".

      Joe

>--
>En ligne avec Thor 2.6a.
>
>Computer programmers know how to use their hardware.
Received on Mon Aug 06 2001 - 10:46:03 BST