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

[John Donaldson]

Back in the late 80's, I was working at NASA/JSC and our lab bought two 
SWCP OS9 - LvL II systems. I got the pleasure of setting them up, 
getting them running, and programming on them, sense I had a COCO 
running OS9 Lvl1 and knew what OS9 was all about. I turned one into a 
multi-terminal word processing system for the lab office staff.

John Donaldson


On 11/3/2011 12:26 AM, John Kent wrote:
> Hi Willard,
>
> I used a HP64000 for software development for the 68000 back in the 
> 1980s.  Were I was working boaught a VAX11-730 for software 
> development although compiles for the 68000 were just as fast on the 
> HP64000 as they were on the VAX.  We had the HP64000 connected to the 
> VAX. We had VT220 terminals connected to VAX. There were 50 engineers 
> in the department. Systems administration was pretty adhoc back then.
>
> John.
>
> On 3/11/2011 8:57 AM, 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.
>>
>> Willard
>