[Coco] HP64000 was Re: LIF util for OS-9?

[Steven Hirsch]

On Wed, 2 Nov 2011, Willard Goosey wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 02, 2011 at 05:14:40PM -0400, Steven Hirsch wrote:
>> Heh.  At one point, I had three of them and two of the monster hard
>> drives.  When space got tight, things had to go.
>
> Wow, nice setup.  Reminds me of the setup I used to get my OS disks.
> 2 64000 mainframes, a fridge-sized hard drive, huge printer, and I
> think one of the luggable 64000's packed into this little storage
> room.  After I got my 64000, I begged the professor in charge of that
> room to let me make copies of his boot disks.
>>
>> I never was able to find out much of anything about the CPU.  I think it
>> said Intersil on it, but otherwise seemed proprietary to the 64000.
>
> HP went to a lot of trouble to make sure NO ONE found out anything
> about the CPU.  I've picked up the impression that it's a straight
> 16-bit CPU (16-bit data bus, 16-bit address bus), byte addressed.
>
> The 64000 was for cross development and HP didn't want you doing
> ANYTHING else on it.
>
> I've never done much more than play around with the 64000.  Without a
> hard drive it's pretty much a toy.  The floppy drives are proprietary,
> so I couldn't just add a couple more 360K drives.  I tried.

FYI: If you can find an IEEE-488 hard disk from a newer HP instrumentation 
computer (forget what those white rack-mounted systems are called), they 
work fine with the 64000 and use more recent 5.25" drive mechanisms.

There's also some sort of IEEE hard drive emulator that uses a PC parallel 
port.  Don't know any details.

Steve


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