HP 1000 E-Series Minicomputer teardown (and eventually, for sale)

[TerraHertz]

http://everist.org/NobLog/20131112_HP_1000_minicomputer_teardown.htm

The page will be updated as the project progresses.

Too many photos to post here. Samples:

[nathanpc]

Thanks very much for the in-depth old school teardown. It's almost pornographic. 

[SeanB]

Very nice work there. All I remember is that the machine ran a test language called ATOL and would happily generate pages of printed paper for each unit when run, detailing which tests failed and the expected data and the measured results. Most run program was a self test routine, which entailed placing a special crosspoint block ( a huge 200 by 200 or so pin connector used to assign the outputs to a cable connector area that was a common test connect point) on the one rack and as well a set of loopback connectors for each type of tested unit or a special loopback test cable. this then ran for around a half day, and would tell you which card and which relay ( all relays were sealed mercury wetted relays for signal and power switching) was out of spec, and what was the spec it failed ( time, insulation resistance at DC and 300VAC and contact resistance) and then you went and changed that relay, or the cable that failed both test units. There were 2 " GURUS" who understood the hardware and more importantly the software who were treated like royalty. The rest of us just followed instructions.

As an idea of just how much they used this unit and needed if one of the 3 airconditioners that kept the unit at 20C ( impressive when you consider the roof would reach 80C at noon) went oops then a call would be made and within 20 minutes there would be Eddie there to fix it right there and then, even if it meant some office lost it's unit as spare parts. Took the rest of us 2 years to get the other aircon replaced, as it detonated up there on the roof one morning and showered us with pieces of broken Blitzer. We measured noon temps indoors then of over 60C, luckily I do not mind heat, just drink a lot of water. Replacement of that unit came in a 747 cargo flight one day after we finally expressed our dissatisfaction to the right ears ( they nearly died from heatstroke in the office) and they expressed extreme dissatisfaction as to why we no longer could test equipment after 8AM.

[dfnr2]

Beautiful. Keep us updated.

[jh15]

I worked with one of these in the next room for 5 years. In all that time no hardware failure from almost 24/7 use.

Mine used 2 8" floppies though.

It ran Unholtz-Dickie shakers with solid state amplifiers. 5KW I think ours was. Fun to run audio music through  .

One in another building of was being thawed out in an environmental chamber. after a liquid CO2 pipe broke in the environmental lab over a weekend.

The chamber, also being exposed to the frozen lab ran away and melted the HP1000 in it. Wish digital cameras or phones were around then. Glossy 8x10 photos were oggled over for days. Those rocker switches just drooled down the front panel.

Years later I found the chamber watchdog "product-saver" instrument had been bypassed by some tech annoyed at false alarms.
I also found the thermocouple chamber controller in a junk pile and saw it had been corroded by the moisture, causing the runaway.

The terminal (in one of his pictures) only had a text and crude graphics, like a Hero card.

Cool inkjet printer though, probably their first entry into the evil inkjet business years later that stole the name.

[free_electron]

HP has all documentation online for these machines.


http://www.hp.com/products1/rte/

http://www.hp.com/products1/rte/tech_support/documentation/index.html

pretty impressive. this machine was first released in 1966 !!!!! ir was finally discontinued in 2000.

i don't know of any other computer that was made for such a long timespan.
These were workhorses. Many a chip tester used these beasts.

[Bored@Work]

Oh, I remember the HP1000, but not in a good way. It was not so much the HP1000, but the printers. Nothing but trouble. We had a bunch of HP's early (first?) HP2225 inkjet printers connected to them. Nozzles getting blocked all the time if you were just looking funny at a printer. It had to be the right paper, or else ... And the ink was already very expensive.

The printers were sitting on some tiny HP 7" terminals. I don't remember the HP product number. Those were cute. Crisp white display, not the usual green, and not taking up much space.

[amyk]

A computer history museum might want it when it's restored... have you tried asking around?


Based on some info I found it looks like the logic is not TTL but some ECL variant (hence the negative supply voltage):
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/HP21xx/
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/HP21xx/CTL.html

[TerraHertz]

HP has all documentation online for these machines.


http://www.hp.com/products1/rte/

http://www.hp.com/products1/rte/tech_support/documentation/index.html

pretty impressive. this machine was first released in 1966 !!!!! ir was finally discontinued in 2000.

i don't know of any other computer that was made for such a long timespan.

Thanks for the links. I _thought_ I had the schematics for the power supply, but when I checked last night it turns out the files I have don't cover up to the 2113E. And the supply is quite different. So it's back to the hunt. You've probably saved me a lot of trouble, since last time I looked at the HP sites (long ago) they didn't have much at all. And what they had scanned was truly terrible, quality - mostly unusable. So I'd probably have looked there last.

Another one I found: http://www.classiccmp.org/HP/

These were workhorses. Many a chip tester used these beasts.

Coincidentally, I've also recently been collecting HP 8180A/1A/2A Data generator & analyzer sets, precisely so I can do driven-timing analysis of systems, including chips. That's going to be another teardown, sometime after I'm done with the HP 1000. The 818x machines are impressive beasts. Quite cheap now since they all have NiCad battery rot and a few other problems. But repairable.
AND I managed to get full service, op and programming manuals for all of them.

Not even contemplating using the HP 1000 to run them though. Will be HP-IB from standard PCs.

A computer history museum might want it when it's restored... have you tried asking around?

Ha ha ha! This is Australia. There is no 'around' to ask. I was hoping that this thread might come to the attention of potentially interested persons. Also posted on http://www.vintage-computer.com but posts there show up only at moderator approval, and it's slow like treacle.
The biggest risk is that I'll get so attached to the machine while getting it going, that I won't want to sell it. In which case it would get put on a stand in my study and gather dust there, rather than taking up space and gathering dust in the workshop.

Based on some info I found it looks like the logic is not TTL but some ECL variant (hence the negative supply voltage):
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/HP21xx/
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/HP21xx/CTL.html

I only have schematics and parts lists for the M series, not the 2113E/F. So far. The M series CPU board seems to be all 74xxx families logic: 74, 74H, 74S, etc.
But the E series is apparently faster, and I agree the -2V says 'ECL or something like it'.
Maybe that's where the 'E' in E-series came from? The 'F' stands for floating point - it's a E-series with an additional floating point microcode ROM set.

If anyone knows a url for 2113E/F power supply and CPU schematics, I'd really appreciate it.

Earlier ones from http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/hp/1000/1000_MEF_EngrRef

This is all sort-of from one document, printed June 1979. Covers up to 2113A. Not 2113E/F
Only some sections are from later editions. Still no 2113E/F.

   92851-90001_Jun79_0.pdf    1.0M    HP1000 eng & Ref doc - contents
   92851-90001_Jun79_9.pdf      8.3M  Power supply - theory of operation May 1976
   92851-90001_Mar81_0.0.pdf  632K  Contents, 2nd ed. Mar 1981
   92851-90001_Mar81_1.1.pdf  8.5M    E & F-Series CPU Theory of operation
   92851-90001_Mar81_1.2.pdf  6.9M    F-Series floating point processor
   92851-90001_Mar81_1.3.pdf  8.6M    M-Series CPU
   92851-90001_Mar81_2.pdf    11M    Memory cards
   92851-90001_Mar81_3.pdf    2.8M    12897A Dual channel port controller
   92851-90001_Mar81_4.pdf    2.9M    12892A Memory protect
   92851-90001_Mar81_5.pdf    2.3M    12731A Memory expansion module
   92851-90001_Mar81_6.pdf    1.6M    12791A Firmware expansion module
   92851-90001_Mar81_7.pdf    610K    Backplane assemblies
   92851-90001_Mar81_8.pdf    942K    Front panel
   92851-90001_Mar81_9.pdf    5.1M    Power supplies (does not include 2113E/F)

It's all very patchy.

[TerraHertz]

HP has all documentation online for these machines.

No they don't. When you actually check their lists it's ALL software manuals. Nothing about the hardware at all, that I can find. Or much actual code either.
This is very typical of 'contemporary' HP/Agilent, and why I had little hope of finding much of use on their site.

http://www.hp.com/products1/rte/

Justs points to the second link:

http://www.hp.com/products1/rte/tech_support/documentation/index.html

Uurgh.
If I was dictator, no corporation would be permitted to trade at all, unless they maintained full and free online libraries of complete technical information on all their 'no longer supported' products.

[TerraHertz]

Update: currently working on scanning the manuals I have.
But I need some advice on post-scan processing of the images.
See here: http://everist.org/archives/scans/query/image_processing_query.htm

I really need to find a graphics editing forum to ask that. But thought I'd add it as an update here too.

[max-bit]

Not bad.... but in Poland in the 1970s! was built minicomputer K-202 project engineer Jacek Karpinski.
Based on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-202
The K-202 was capable of running about one million operations per second !!!; however, its instruction set was not well suited to the typical tasks, making practical performance somewhat lower. Although the communist world was decades behind the West in integrated circuit manufacture, the export of which was (and still is) strictly controlled. Despite this, apparently, remarkable performance and low price there was no commercial interest from anywhere in the world. K-202 claimed to be the first mini-computer which used the paging technique, providing 8 MB of virtual memory; however, what its constructors called paging was in fact a simple segmentation. Furthermore, the advertised upper limit of 8MB of memory was practically unreachable due to signal propagation delays, 144 KB being the largest available configuration. K-202 was based on small- and medium-scale integrated circuits
Specyfication:
-Multiprogramming
-Multiprocessing
-16-bit word
-More than 90 instructions
-7 universal registers
-16 ways of determining argument
-Operating memory of up to 4 million words
-Direct addressing of up to 64k words
-Autonomic data exchange with operating memories at the speed of 16 Mbit/s [note: i.e. 1M words/s]
-Implementation method - TTL/MSI integrated circuits
-Memory cycle 0.7 us
-Processing speed of 1 million operations/second K-202 factsheet in Polish

http://www.zenker.poznan.pl/k-202/dokumentacja/k-202-reklama-ang.pdf

[CParish]

I know this thread is old, but considering it was one of the first pages I found in Google while troubleshooting, I thought I would throw in some helpful info.

I just got one of these minicomputers in the mail.  Like yours in the pictures, mine also has the battery backup option (conveniently with no batteries) and wouldn't power up.  That 820Ohm jumper plug needs to be connected to the battery input terminal if you don't have their battery pack attached.  Those pins are where the thermistor would be connected, and without a normal value, the charging card thinks the pack is melting down/broken and inhibits the memory power rails from starting up.

Surprisingly, that was the only thing "wrong" with it.  HP really built these things to last, and although the architecture and IO interfaces are a little wonky, I am hoping to retarget LLVM to it and build an ethernet card eventually.  After all, how many computers from 1978 are still on the internet? 

[fzabkar]

@TerraHertz, I have a HP-1000 21-MX and a spare PSU, and maybe some cards. It did come with a reel-to-reel MTU, but I'm not sure if I still have it.

I am in the Wollongong area of NSW. I think the mini is an F-Series, but I'm not sure (it's been in a wooden crate since 1992). Would these be of any interest to you? I also have some documentation … somewhere. Otherwise I'm looking for a museum that might want this gear.

[1276-2449-1-ND]

One of my first jobs as a nerdy teenager was programming on an HP3000 minicomputer. Part of that was porting code over to a Compaq 386 -- then state-of-the-art and incredibly expensive. The Compaq ran rings around the HP3000, but the HP3000 could have simultaneous users (dialed-in at 300 baud) and running jobs (engineering analysis and plotting). SCO Xenix-386 finally killed the minicomputer market and I would drive around the city with my pickup truck and rescue them off the streets. Good times.