HP 64000 - keep or part?

[RolexTM]

Hey all,

We recently got two 64000 systems. Has anybody some experience with those and can tell me if those are usable with a floppy?

They both seem to work but do not boot, and the one with floppy does not try to do.

Before I dive into the manuals - do I need another component like an external disk or so to use those?

If one can not do anything with those things we might just part them out …

 

[RolexTM]

Ah, we have another one in storage that no one ever tested. The question remains the same though, are those of any value - value in sense that one could actually run anything on them without periperherals that I guess are missing (as said, be sorry with me I have not looked into a manual yet)

 

[NeXT]

Think of them less as desktop computers and more as in-circuit emulators and IIRC yes you do require the appropriate disk sets to use whatever emulators the units are equipped with. (but you do not require an external disk drive) The majority of the software has been archived over on bitsavers, as has also most of the documentation. - https://www.bitsavers.org/bits/HP/64000/

Looking at your photos you have processor emulation kits for the Motorola 6809, 68HC11 and the 68000. The real magic for these now is for debugging at the processor, like a Fluke 9010A.

Now, I mention the 9010 because if you run off and do a price check still sells for over $1000 but the last hold-out for people buying those are the revenue-chasing arcade people and that being said you'll be hard pressed to find someone willing to pay half that much for an HP 64000 because HP's debugger is totally different than fluke's and you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I think the last ones I saw sell was two years ago in the bay area and at auction made it up to $300. Everyone I know now who owns an ICE mainly uses it for board repairs (stuck bits, bad ram, program stepping to find ROM faults etc.) rather than debugging new designs.

Are they worth keeping? Only if you want to debug systems with those specific processors. Otherwise I'd first look for someone willing to buy the lot rather than break it up.

 

[RolexTM]

Ah, we have 3 drawers of floppy’s, but the one system with a floppy does nothing, it only displays the message but will never access the disk.

The other one is halting with a obscure message too.

I know that those are development boxes for in circuit emulation and rom burning and stuff. That’s about it

So, if one of those would work one could load software from the internal drive is what you say.

If you have experience with those, do you think those are worth repairing from a „visitor“ standpoint? I think I need to look at the emulator …

You think there is interest in aquiring those? Not from the stand point of making a lot of money, but if it is a sacrilege to dismantle those…

Edit: ah, I read your edit. Thank you for your insight!

 

[NeXT]

from a demo standpoint I can't think of a lot you can demo with it beyond possibly a compact mac using the debug switch to screw with memory and then use the ICE to view the changes.

 

[cfbsoftware]

That brings back great memories. I was employed by BAeA (British Aerospace Australia - now BAE Systems Australia) as the leader of the AFTA Application development team based at McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) in St Louis, MO in the early 1980's. We used a network of 10 HP 64000 systems to develop the application software for the 8086-based AFTA (Avionics Fault Tree Analyzer) for the F/A-18 aircraft. The system is described in an article F/A-18 Analyzer Speeds Fault Isolation in the 30th April 1984 edition of Aviation Week and Space Technology:

Aviation Week — April 30 1984

Explore the full April 30 1984 issue of Aviation Week. Browse featured articles, preview selected issue contents, and more.

archive.aviationweek.com

We targeted the 8086 ICE board with the HP64000 Pascal compiler. A neat feature of the system was the row of softkeys that you can see at the top of the keyboard. These were syntax-aware and allowed quick entry of the specific Pascal keywords that were valid at a particular point in the statement that you were writing.

Somebody was looking for these systems a few years ago:

EEVblog Captcha

 

[pbirkel]

Considering the family of 64000 systems, perhaps someone can explain the HP 64276 Microprogram Development Subsystem? Although it’s associated with the 64000 Logic Development System, based on the available documentation (limited marketing literature) the association appears to be weaker than implied by the product number. It appears to really be a set of modules that integrate into the HP 64320S 25 MHz Logic State/Software Analyzer (about which AFAICS there is zero information online) despite the marketing claim that the HP 64276 consists of “integrated subsystems of the HP 64000 Logic Development System”. See this diagram:



The "real" HP 64000 system appears to exist only at, and ties only to, the System Under Test using conventional signals.

Perhaps the magic is in the “IMB" between the "real" HP 64000 Analyzer and the HP 64320S Logic State/Software Analyzer? The "IMB" is what? Instrumentation <mumble> Bus?

 

[Al Kossow]

Inter Module Bus shows up in other products that came out of Colorado Springs, and there isn't much information about it.
I wonder if it is related to the bus used in their logic analyzers.

I vaguely remember digging into the embedded logic analyzer option in the 64000 thinking the design looked a lot
like what they were building into their early logic analyzers.

 

[nikola-wan]

I was a member of the Compaq Desktop Computer hardware design team, and after designing the keyboard interface processor (Intel 8042) assembly code for the Compaq Deskpro 286 using an Intel 8042 ICE and PC to 8042 cross assembler, we began working on the Compaq Deskpro 386 as Intel's primary customer for the Intel 386. Intel did not have an ICE for the 386, so I worked with HP to develop a 386 bus analyzer. I developed a memory interposer board for the Deskpro 386 that provided all the 386 CPU data and control bus signals to the HP 64000, and worked with HP to created a program for the HP 64000 to analyze and display the 386 bus states for all the 386 CPU reads and writes.

Our Deskpro 386 BIOS team used the HP 64000 to debug their new 386 BIOS code in record time and introduce the Compaq Deskpro 386 in September 1986 - before IBM or any other PC-Compatible manufacturer could introduce their 386 PC.

Compaq also partnered with Microsoft to develop Windows 386 and I helped them use the HP 64000 to debug their new Windows 386 code for memory virtualization.

Other than that background information - I don't remember anything more about the HP 64000.

Intel added a cache controller to the 486 CPU, so most of the memory accesses were hidden in the 486 - so a bus analyzer like the HP 64000 and other in-circuit emulators were no longer very useful for debugging code.

 

[pbirkel]

Inter Module Bus shows up in other products that came out of Colorado Springs, and there isn't much information about it.
I wonder if it is related to the bus used in their logic analyzers.

I vaguely remember digging into the embedded logic analyzer option in the 64000 thinking the design looked a lot
like what they were building into their early logic analyzers.

Thank you Al. I see that search for HP "Inter-Module Bus" has several hits in Bitsavers documents :-}.

Now having studied Bitsavers 64100-90910_Model_64100A_Mainframe_Service_Manual_Dec83.pdf I am wondering what modules are installed in the two OP systems:

 

[RolexTM]

Hey,

No fancy modules, just cpu, i/o, display and memory in each of them. And then the interface card that connects to each of the emulators / chip burner / floppy drive.

So the machines are pretty much empty besides that.

Still on the fence about what to do with those. They are big and take a lot of space, not easy to ship. .


Alex

 

[pbirkel]

No fancy modules, just cpu, i/o, display and memory in each of them. And then the interface card that connects to each of the emulators / chip burner / floppy drive.

So the machines are pretty much empty besides that.

Thank you for checking. I hadn't realized that the HP 64000 was more than just a platform hosting a multitude of microprocessor-specific modules for in-system processor emulation/analysis (ICE):

It seems to be configurable as a general logic analyzer if one adds the more generic modules (e.g., acquisition, timing analyzer, state analyzer, control, clock probe, ...). For example:

From: http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stu...DS_Configuration_Guide_5953-xxxx-Jul-1985.pdf

See pages 4-12 thru 4-16 there for the card configuration of the HP 64276 Microprogram Development System; Figure 1 in my earlier post now makes more sense. It's interesting that HP supported both a standard WCS configuration based on widths of 16, 32, or 64-bits for a maximum of (respectively) 16, 8, and 4-kWords, and a user-defined WCS that I infer was intended for supporting other bit-widths and capacities.

 

[RolexTM]

Yes, those machines seem very versatile. Although I would guess that the logic analyzer part is something you do not want to use in todays world (in contrast to the CPU debugging part).
I had my fair share of old super expensive logic analyzer stuff in the past, nothing beats a modern "software defined" platform with virtually unlimited storage where I can look at all data
as often as I want to on my PC and do not have to worry about setting my trigger conditions super correct.... at least in my opinion.

As for the 64000 - we could create one ultimate machine with all the interfaces in it that nobody is able to carry anymore because of the weight :D (We have 3 of them)
As some may know, we have arcade boards in the museum too - but the typical Z80, 6800 and 68000 stuff is just "simple" enough that I never needed some fancy equipment until now.

Bottom line - still undecided what to do with them - parting them out seems less and less of an option the more I look at the machines ... but if anyone is following that has interest and might pick them up in the region Basel/CH....

 

[MiaM]

Thank you for checking. I hadn't realized that the HP 64000 was more than just a platform hosting a multitude of microprocessor-specific modules for in-system processor emulation/analysis (ICE):
View attachment 1317970

This is really cool, didn't know that!
The conclusion I get from this chart is that just using either a VAX with VMS or a HP 9000/S500 computer (or today rather emulation) the HP 64000 software can be used to develop programs in assembler, pascal and/or C for many of these microprocessors! Kind of wild that HP provided C and Pascal development tools for processors like the Z80 and 6800.
How much of all this have survived, and what of it might even be out there online somewhere?
I have almost no HP experience, but I would say that I'm at some sort of intermediate level when it comes to VMS. It would be cool to take a look at the VMS stuff.
Seems easy to find scanned software catalogues, but then?

 

[NeXT]

How much of all this have survived, and what of it might even be out there online somewhere?

Bitsavers is your friend. HP test hardware likes to get the same treatment Motorola's software and technical books got in that a lot is still unarchived because people are afraid of the boogeyman.

 

[Al Kossow]

Bitsavers is your friend. HP test hardware likes to get the same treatment Motorola's software and technical books got in that a lot is still unarchived because people are afraid of the boogeyman.

Not really. People just didn't bother to save it, or the products were so expensive that they didn't sell many of them.
The Unix tools for 64xxx series products are extremely rare. I went through a large collection of DAT backups HP gave CHM looking
for emulator software and only found a couple of tapes that had 68K cross-development tools on them.

The same is true for all of the logic analyzer options. I have tons of manuals for things like JTAG hardware debuggers and the pods,
but no surviving copies of the HP-UX PA-RISC software to use them.

I'd love to spend time reverse-engineering all this hardware to make it useful again, but I've collected so much other ICEmulator stuff
I'm never going to get to it.

 

[MiaM]

Oh, I assume then that if the HP Unix / PA RISC software is hard to find, the VMS versions of the software would probably be unobtanium.

A tiny bit surprising at least if that software could run without the HP 64000 hardware for cross development. not that many hobbyists had access to these machines back in the days, but I would think that some computer clubs had early VAX computers in say the early 90's or so when a company could replace a full 11/780 with a simple VAXstation 3100 ending up with more performance and a lower power bill.

 

[MiaM]

What "early computer clubs"? I wrote "computer clubs had early VAX computers", which you even quoted directly...

 

[Al Kossow]

"computer clubs had early VAX computers"

name them
maybe in sweden, but not in the US

 

[MiaM]

I'm not 100% sure about the time line, but in the mid-late 90's SDF (Södertälje Dataförening) in Södertälje, Sweden, had a VAX 8600 and more than one 11/750. The club was started in the 80's (or possibly even late 70's, initially as SEF, Södertälje Elektronikförening, where "förening" roughly translates as "club" (or NGO)).
I've never been involved in contacting companies and asking if they have any old computers to donate, but in general AFAIK members of clubs just contacted local companies. Sometimes companies even arranged the transport of the computers.

Fun anecdote: Almost all companies understood what the club was looking for and either donated something interesting or responded that they didn't have anything to donate, but Compaq didn't get the memo. They donated a 386SX16 computer, 1M ram and a small hard disks, with a keyboard and a mice, in a fully refurbished/working state with DOS 6 and nothing more installed on the disk. Most likely their generic "donate to clubs" package that they did to generate good PR for the company. It would likely had been great for say a foodball club who needed to do some simple word processing, score keeping or whatnot, but for SDF it became a bit of a joke. With 1M ram it wouldn't really be able to run Linux. Can't remember what happened to that computer in particular.

Thinking about it, I kind of feel like it would be a good idea to contact those who managed to get donated computers and ask them to write down the stories, perhaps with the company names redacted, in order for the stories to not get lost.
(My memory of when things happened is really vague, I initially came into contact with this club in the mid 90's and the club ceased to exist, or at least to "operate", in the mid 00's, and thus it's a bit hard for me to remember if a particular computer was donated to the club in 1997 or 2003. At the final years the club even got some Alphas (IIRC a DEC 3000 alpha).

I don't know what happened to the larger computers when the club ceased. There were some computers that I think was rare, like two full height 19" rack Solbourne computers (SUN based, but larger than what SUN themselves offered), and also a minicomputer that I can't remember the brand/name but the computer was made up of three larger under desk drawer sized cabinets, one containing the computer and the other two containing a total of 20 1GB 5.25" full height disks. Given that the donator obviously didn't want the club to get anything except the OS, the disks were mostly empty and since the total storage was large at the time, it was used to house an MP3 collection :D