HP-85 Re: anyone in rochester?

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Wed Aug 27 09:34:00 2003

At 08:13 PM 8/26/03 -0500, you wrote:
>> >Oh, and I also
>> >recently acquired an HP-85, man that thing is cute!
>>
>> Yeap, they make nice little instrument controllers. I was reading 'Fire
>> in the Valley' last night and it has a chapter on the HP-85. Funny to
>think
>> that HP actually thought that the 85 could compete with the IBM PC as a
>> general purpose computer!
>
>Oh man, I gotta disagree. The HP-85 is a wonderful machine and in most
>respects IS a general purpose computer. I'll take it over an IBM PC any day
>of the week. But in addition to playing with it standalone, wonder what it
>could do with my 1631D analyzer. I am assuming my 2225 thinkjet will work on
>it. Need to find what floppies and hard disks are supported via the HP-IB
>module too.

   Unfortunately, not many. Is your's just an 85 or is it an 85B? I'm
assuming that it's just an 85 since you didn't say it was a B. The B has a
built-in Mass Storage ROM. You can add that ROM to your 85 and use it with
the HP 9121 disk drive. I think the same ROM also supports the old 52901 5
1/4" and HP 9895 8" disk drives. The only hard drive that's supported by
that ROM is the HP-9133/9134 option 010. That option makes the 5 Mb drive
look like 3 1.5Mb 9895 disk drives. Note that some of the 9133/9134s have a
switch inside to trun that option off and on so you may be able to buy a
regular 9133/9134 and turn it into an option 010 drive. I've only found one
like that but the drive in it is bad so I haven't been able to try it. The
010 drives are rare. I've only found one of them but I have 20 or so later
9133s that don't have the option of the switch.

   Thre is also an Extended Mass Storage ROM that supports hard dirves.
IIRC it supports 9133/9134s without the 010 option. But the EMS ROM is
very rare.

   The 85 is a fine machine, it's too bad that they saddled it with a tape
drive! It would have been a great machine if they would have replaced the
tape drive with a 3.5" floppy drive.


>
>I am hoping there are other '85 enthusiasts on the list?

  Oh yeah! there's plenty of us.

I have some spare
>roms... looking for the assembler rom. Saw some mention of pascal for this
>beast too! Ok, has anyone found a decent source for the DC100 tapes it uses,
>or am I doomed to pay ebay prices for each tape?

   Don't buy HP tapes! They're THE worst tapes out there. You can go back
and read the CC list archives, there's been lots of discussion about the HP
tape drives and HP tapes. You can use the old DEC tapes or the old 40Mb
tapes that were used for PC tape drives. They both work fine. Use the
INITIALIZE command to reformat them on the 85.

>
>Sorry, acting like a kid at christmas :>

   Welcome to the world of HP computers!

     Joe
>
>Jay West
Received on Wed Aug 27 2003 - 09:34:00 BST