HP 300

From: joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Fri May 18 07:16:08 2001

At 12:49 AM 5/17/01 +0100, Iggy wrote:
>This week had a fine start. I walked into a little computer shop which has
>trays of old ISA cards and sometimes odd equipment which I can buy cheaply.
>This monday, they had a slightly familiar-looking box on top of a large
>shipment of PCs. A HP 9000/300! When I asked them what it would cost, they
>were surprised that they could even charge money for it, and let me have it
>for 50 crowns. My pleasure. Once I had bought it, though, I though that
>9000/300 was a suspiciously low number. Wasn't that some kind of 68010 based
>machine?


    The low end ones are 68010 based but the more powerfull models of 300
series use the other more powerfull 680x0 CPUs and lots more memory.



>And why would such a machine have two Ethernet NICs? It really semed
>like a waste, but on the underground ride how, I pulled out the big board with
>all the ports, which seemed notably shinier and newer than the NIC above, and
>found that it had a 68040. I thus deducted that it must be a 9000/380. Has
>this machine been upgraded, or did HP simply not bother to identify their
>machines any closer than the series (in this case 9000/300)?


     No, they usually just mark them as 300s on the case. However if you
look inside the grill on the back that covers the power supply you'll see
the actual model number.


>In any case, it came without keyboard, and I read that in order to switch it
>over to serial terminal mode, one would have to perform a certain manoeuvre
>via the keyboard. Bloody well thought out, HP! Is there no way to use a serial
>terminal without any HIL keyboard involved?


    I'm not sure I understand your question but usually you can use a
serial terminal connected to serial port one or you can use the HP_HIL
keyboard and a monitor. You usually have to change a switch inside to tell
it which to use. I think one of the Net-BSD websites tells you how to do
it. Other than that, you'll need the HP_HIL keyboard. At least the HIL
keyboards are standard. It could be worse, they could have made a different
keyboard for every model!

>The machine starts up and beeps a little. It's got not drives installed, but
>there's a 50-pin "Centronics" connector marked SCSI/FS-HPIB. What is FS-HPIB?

    I don't know. The 380 is a bit beyond me. I try to stick to the 200
series and the lesser machines and they don't use that. There are some
sites on the net that talk about the 300s and identify the various cards in
them and tell how to convert them to Net-BSD so you can probably find some
usefull into there.

      Joe

      Joe
Received on Fri May 18 2001 - 07:16:08 BST