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HP 1000 F-series.

MattisLind

MattisLind

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 30, 2013
Messages
1,193
Location
Stockholm, Sweden
Well. Maybe I am crazy, but we got this mail from the Swedish Maritime Administration last year. They had a HP 1000 that they were disposing. Were we interested?

Maybe. There were no specifics about it other than it was in store in Norrköping some 160 km south of Stockholm on several pallets. And it was free.

Down in Norrköping we found this which we brought home.

IMG_1749.jpg

A HP 21MX F-series with a floating point processor and a HP 7906 drive. Vintage late seventies / early eighties. It had 1 Mbyte of RAM installed.

IMG_1755.jpg

A very maritime handle for the key... The machine had been used for collecting cartography data.

IMG_1752.jpg

With the system there were a HP7970E 1600bpi tape drive. There were also a HP7933 hard disk. But we didn't bring that with me. Stupid? Maybe. But as far as could understand there were no disc packs with it. It was heavy and I am bit reluctant trying to keep old hard drives running. There are so much in them that could fail. As far as I understand it could be emulated.

When searching their storage container I also found a HP9810A calculator as well as a Cipher F880 half inch tape drive with PERTEC interface.

There were supposed by another pallet with all manuals, software (presumably disc packs) and the terminals. But it couldn't be found...
 
Hi All;
MattisLind, Congratulations, You should be able to keep Yourself out of trouble for awhile.. I think Your Cipher is very Similar to mine..

THANK YOU Marty
 
I have the same PERTEC tape drives on my PDP-11/84. That I can recall, the 7933 disk drive was a non-removable drive.
 
Looks like you’re doing well collecting up the obsolete systems, first the PDP-11 and now the HP, next will have to be a Data General Nova.
Don’t know why the HP-1000 doesn’t get the same amount of love as the DEC stuff? That’s a good haul for a couple hundred miles round trip.
 
Qbus said:
Looks like you’re doing well collecting up the obsolete systems, first the PDP-11 and now the HP, next will have to be a Data General Nova.
Don’t know why the HP-1000 doesn’t get the same amount of love as the DEC stuff? That’s a good haul for a couple hundred miles round trip.
Click to expand...
It's a planning thing as well. Wife and kids out of town. Can do whatever I want until Saturday...

Well. I agree. It is kind of strange that HP is not getting that much attention. They are nice machines from an engineering point of view. Nicely built, all gold plated cards, sturdy chassis. Maybe they weren't that successful with the software? I actually haven't tried RTE yet.

That I can recall, the 7933 disk drive was a non-removable drive.
Click to expand...
You're right. Maybe I should have brought it anyway...
 
MattisLind said:
Down in Norrköping we found this which we brought home.

View attachment 19370
Click to expand...


(Sob) I have been trying to find one more of those HP green racks for ages.
Need one to fill this hole, and typical modern racks are always a little bit too wide. Also, don't match the other 5 HP green racks along this wall.
But do you think I can find one? Nope.
My being in Australia is part of the problem, I suppose. They seem to be very rare here.

IMG_7714_crop.jpg
 
What about your E-series? Did you get any further with that one? Found any other manuals than the ones at bitsavers? It is really a pity that there are so few engineering drawings for HP equipment (at least compared with DEC). Tony Duell has done a great work reverse engineering several HP machines, for example the HP9830 which I have been working with lately. I don't think he had done anything with HP 1000 though.
 
If this has the DRAM in it and you didn't get the battery pack,
it will need a resistor on the connector that would have gone
to the battery pack to let it think there is a battery pack.
I'd have taken everything they had. Even if I'd have needed to
rent a truck.
Dwight
 
Dwight Elvey said:
If this has the DRAM in it and you didn't get the battery pack,
it will need a resistor on the connector that would have gone
to the battery pack to let it think there is a battery pack.
I'd have taken everything they had. Even if I'd have needed to
rent a truck.
Dwight
Click to expand...

This one has three 256 k boards, and four 64 k boards. So it has DRAMs. And it has the battery pack. The reason for not taking the hard drive was that I thought I use a HPIB emulator to emulate the 7933 drive. And it was rather heavy. But now when thinking of it it would maybe be nice to have the drive... It would make up a nice system. But then there is the space issue. We can't just hoard everything... We already have a M-series with a 7900 drive and paper tape punch / reader. And then the maintenance issue. Maybe 7933 is a very reliable drive. Most HP stuff is very reliable.

The system was delivered in 1979. There is a note indicating so on the inside of the door. I guess that it was later upgraded with more memory (presumably the initial config was four 64 k boards) and the 7933 HPIB drive. Initially I think it only had the 7906 drive.

BTW. Does the 7900 make use of the same cartridges as the 7906?

/Mattis
 
MattisLind said:
What about your E-series? Did you get any further with that one? Found any other manuals than the ones at bitsavers? It is really a pity that there are so few engineering drawings for HP equipment (at least compared with DEC). Tony Duell has done a great work reverse engineering several HP machines, for example the HP9830 which I have been working with lately. I don't think he had done anything with HP 1000 though.
Click to expand...

What schematics are you looking for which you haven't yet found? I have an HP 1000 2113E and also 2117F (plus a 2100A too) and I think I have been able to find schematics online for every board in them.

In addition to bitsavers there are also docs online at www.hpmuseum.net although I don't know if there are any docs there than aren't also on bitsavers.
 
MattisLind said:
BTW. Does the 7900 make use of the same cartridges as the 7906?

/Mattis
Click to expand...

I don't think so but I'm not an expert on these.
I have neither for mass storage. I'd been looking
for a disk drive and controller to use with my 21MX
but they are always out of my budget. I have loaded
code serially ( RS232 ), just to see something run
but I'm off on other projects right now.
Dwight
 
gslick said:
What schematics are you looking for which you haven't yet found? I have an HP 1000 2113E and also 2117F (plus a 2100A too) and I think I have been able to find schematics online for every board in them.

In addition to bitsavers there are also docs online at www.hpmuseum.net although I don't know if there are any docs there than aren't also on bitsavers.
Click to expand...

Maybe I jumped to conclusion a little to fast. If I searched on bitsavers a bit more I could find great deal about the CPU, the 7906 disc, the 13037 disc controller.

What I didn't immediately found was something on the 12821 card. And also stuff for the 7900 disc and controller boards. Maybe it is somewhwere else where I haven't looked yet.

/Mattis
 
MattisLind said:
Maybe I jumped to conclusion a little to fast. If I searched on bitsavers a bit more I could find great deal about the CPU, the 7906 disc, the 13037 disc controller.

What I didn't immediately found was something on the 12821 card. And also stuff for the 7900 disc and controller boards. Maybe it is somewhwere else where I haven't looked yet.

/Mattis
Click to expand...

12821A
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/21xx/interfaces/12821-90006_CS80intf.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/21xx/interfaces/12821-90006_Jan82.pdf

7906
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/07906-90901_7906_UM_Mar80.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/07906-90904_TechInfPkg.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/07906-90905_CE_Jul84.pdf

13037
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/13037-90902_TechInfPk_Aug80.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/13037-90905_CEhndbook_Mar85.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/13037A.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/13037C.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/13037D.pdf

7900
http://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?hwdoc=275
 
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MattisLind said:
What about your E-series? Did you get any further with that one? Found any other manuals than the ones at bitsavers? It is really a pity that there are so few engineering drawings for HP equipment (at least compared with DEC). Tony Duell has done a great work reverse engineering several HP machines, for example the HP9830 which I have been working with lately. I don't think he had done anything with HP 1000 though.
Click to expand...

It's still sitting on the bench, waiting for a power supply schematic. I've been occupied with several other projects, and the less urgent ones get neglected. Such is life. Hopefully will get back to it uh.... this year.

When I searched, there definitely wasn't a schematic for that model power supply available. I should look again now.

The original article about that machine is here: http://everist.org/NobLog/20131112_HP_1000_minicomputer_teardown.htm
 
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As I'd said, it won't run without the resistor
in the battery pack. As I recall it won't run with
a flat battery loading the supply down either.
The supply is a switcher. As I recall the supply was used
for a couple different models. It seems like I found
the schematic under one of the other models schematics
someplace.
Dwight
 
gslick said:
12821A
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/21xx/interfaces/12821-90006_CS80intf.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/21xx/interfaces/12821-90006_Jan82.pdf

7906
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/07906-90901_7906_UM_Mar80.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/07906-90904_TechInfPkg.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/07906-90905_CE_Jul84.pdf

13037
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/13037-90902_TechInfPk_Aug80.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/13037-90905_CEhndbook_Mar85.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/13037A.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/13037C.pdf
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/13037D.pdf

7900
http://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?hwdoc=275
Click to expand...

Thanks for the pointers. I probably should have found them myself if I had searched a bit better.

Do you have your HP1000 running? What is the config for those machines?
 
gslick said:
What schematics are you looking for which you haven't yet found? I have an HP 1000 2113E and also 2117F (plus a 2100A too) and I think I have been able to find schematics online for every board in them.

In addition to bitsavers there are also docs online at www.hpmuseum.net although I don't know if there are any docs there than aren't also on bitsavers.
Click to expand...

Hello gslick and everybody ! About the 2113E : Do you mean ** ALL ** boards, including the processor one ??
So far, I haven't been able to locate schematics for it. May you provide some links, if you have them ? Many thanks.
 
Gerardcjat said:
7933 vs 7900A disk drive question

Updating my knowledge : I was told that a 7900A CANNOT run without a disk pack loaded. Is that true ?
Click to expand...

Correct, unless you can keep the heads from loading. This is true for any removable media drive.

Also the 7900 and 7906 packs are NOT interchangeable. The disk platter is thicker on the 7906.
7900 uses IBM style 2315 thickness platters.

I have lots more HP manuals scanned, and boxes more that haven't been scanned. Generally I watch the mailing
lists to see if someone is looking for something that isn't already up, and bump it in the queue if I have it.

Getting through all the unsorted paper is something I have to get through soon. It's all taking up way too much space.
 
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