HP2000/Access - in it's final form - alive!!

From: Jay West <jwest_at_classiccmp.org>
Date: Thu Jan 15 08:06:59 2004

You wrote...
> Congrats on getting your system back up!

Thanks! It has been pure hell to be honest. Many times it seemed to be up,
only to have something fail the day after I posted it was up. But I'm pretty
sure it's up for a good while now :)

> I have a favor to ask. Could you give us times for Access to run these HP
benchmarks. HP was kind enough to give us times for a number of other
systems, but Access was not around when these numbers were published. I
guess we should know which CPU type your Main is too.

Sure, no problem. I will try to run it tonight. My main and IOP cpu's are
2100A and 2100S respectively. However, a project is under way to reverse
engineer the Access IOP microcode and port to the E machines, so at some
point I will likely have two 21MXE cpus instead. Speaking of which, I notice
in the comments you list times for C, C', F, E, etc... these aren't really
detailed enough. For example, E will run faster on a 21MX than a 2100 mainly
due to memory access times between core and semiconductor.

> Were you able to get the HP2000 Access running under SIMH? It sure sucks a
lot less juice than real hardware, and that translates directly into heat.
The heat is reusable in the winter (free heat) but in the summer you have to
pay a second time to get rid of the heat (AC).

*GRIN* Most true. However, I'm not working with SIMH as I'm still working on
my own HP emulator "HPEMU". Mine emulates not just a cpu, but a whole
computer room full of separate (or connected) HP systems, printers, etc. I
made huge progress on it, then got stonewalled due to work issues. I hope to
get back to it and finish it off. It's not all that far from being done if I
could just find the time to get back into it.

> I have a number of other HIB tapes that I need to get converted and
tested. Are you in a position to convert dot-tap files back to real (reel)
tapes? If so I can post things for you and send you a URL for them.
Otherwise I would have to get some scratch tapes and cut them here and mail
them.

I currently do not have a 1/2 tape drive hooked up to a PC to cut .tap
files. However, I'm working on that - right now it's top priority. I would
hope to have everything in place for that within a week or two.

> How much disk are you running? We'll have to set up HIBE tapes that will
fit on your system. We usually run 2 simulated 2883 disks for an Access
simulation (50 MEG total) but that could be pushed up if we need it.

I currently have one 7906D (30mb) running, but with Access you loose head 3
as it only supports 7905's. I seem to recall that works out to something
like 25mb (removable and fixed platters are different densities, and "heads"
2 and 3 are actually on the same platter). However, I have a 7900A (10mb) in
a separate rack I can easily wheel in and connect, as well as another
working 7906D in a different separate rack I can wheel in and connect. So I
currently have 30mb ballpark, but can have 40 or 60mb easily.

> Keep us posted.

Sure!

Jay West

---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
Received on Thu Jan 15 2004 - 08:06:59 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:36:46 BST