Whoops ... hit the wrong key sequence ... forgot how to compose mail 
away from the Mac. :-)

On 13 Sep 2006 at 19:52, Wirt Atmar wrote:

> Gary asks:
> 
> > I am doing a little intro to Operating Systems with the first year students
> >  and I would like to show them some pictures of HP's  to explain that
> >  Microsoft did not invent the computer and the operating system. I have 
> found
> >  lots of IBM, Sperry Univac, etc.  Boy lots of memories there!. But I have
> >  not found any for HP. The HP historical web site seems to have skipped over
> >  3000's.
> 
> The following URL has pictures taken by Mark Klein of the very first HP3000 
> datasheets:
> 
>      http://aics-research.com/first3k.html

I still have these old sales documents. Ah, fond memories. We had a 
pre-CX box (the one with the maintenance panel with all das blinken' 
lights .... now that was a _real_ computer! - picture 1) for just a 
very short period after I joined my first company. Before I really 
got a chance to fiddle with the switches, we upgraded to a CX and 
then a few years later to a Series II.

If you all remember the "noise" made about clean electricity in those 
years, we were directly responsible for that. 

Our 3000 would crash every hour on the hour and it took months to 
finally figure it out. For a period, we'd all stop work about five 
minutes before the hour and then return about 5 minutes after the 
hour. That was the only way we could keep that machine up.

Well, some bright engineer figured out the problem eventually ... our 
building had a Simplex clock system in it that every hour on the 
hour, a signal was injected into the AC line that would syncrhonize 
all the clocks in the building. Turns out that signal also caused our 
head-per-track disk (see 2660A Disk Memory sheet) to take a hike. We 
ultimately had these huge oil filled thingies installed on the AC 
line to filter the AC and that resolved it.

As I said, Ah ....fond  memories! :-)


Regards,


M.

-- 
Mark Klein
http://www.dis.com
PGP Key Available

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