HP2000

From: Jay West <jwest_at_classiccmp.org>
Date: Wed Feb 5 14:17:22 2003

> I thought so too, until I found a table in a CE handbook that lists
> the part numbers for the 2000/Access IOP firmware options for the
> 2100, M-series, and E-series.
VERY kewl! But... please clarify... are you saying it lists one firmware
part for the M, and one for the E, or one part number for firmware that
works in either? I wouldn't think it would work in the F, as the microcode
architecture appears very different in the F. However, many microcode
instructions are the same between the two, but as to the differences, some
microorders are new in the F, some microorders that are common just have
different binary representations. So.. if the particular firmware for the M
only uses instructions with happen to exist in both and are encoded the same
in both, we could be very lucky and left with just putting the board in an
F, or just moving the bits to a different chip for the F. Hummm please
enlighten me on this!

> Many people seem to have incomplete F-series machines, which do not
> actually have the floating point unit. I believe that it would be
> necessary to downgrade those to an E-series in order to use them;
> the necessary change would simply be to install the E-series microcode,
> as the CPU board is otherwise identical to a late-model E-series board.
> Then the E-series IOP microcode could be used, if we had it.
IF we had it *sigh*. Can you post that E series IOP firmware part number, so
I can start searching??

> I think that's the "smart" mux. The earlier versions of TSB (A, B,
> and C) needed a different, "dumb" mux, which counted on the CPU to
> bit-bang each character, thus were limited to 300 bps max (at least for
> TSB). The "smart" mux is used on 2000 C' (AKA High-Speed 2000C), E, F,
> and Access. I don't have the relevant part number information handy.
I knew about the A & B using the old mux (which appears to have disappeared
from the face of the earth), but I thought C used the newer "smart" mux.
Good to Know.

> Scanned printed listings of the source for C' and E are on my web site.
> The only machine-readable source code I've got is for 2000 Access.
Which brings us back to needing the IOP firmware, in order to tweak the code
to support other more common drives. *sigh*

Jay West
Received on Wed Feb 05 2003 - 14:17:22 GMT