Well, here we are. If you boot up a classic HP 3000 system and simply hit
return when it asks you for the date and time, it will default to:

 

HP32002E.01.00

WHICH OPTION <WARMSTART/COOLSTART>? COO

ANY CHANGES? N

 

DATE (M/D/Y)?

WED, NOV  1, 1972, 12:00 AM

LOG FILE NUMBER 64 ON

*WELCOME*

:HELLO OPERATOR.SYS;HIPRI

0:00/13/SP#6/SPOOLED OUT

0:00/#S1/14/LOGON FOR: OPERATOR.SYS,OPERATOR ON LDEV #20

HP3000 / MPE V  E.01.00 (BASE E.01.00).  WED, NOV  1, 1972, 12:00 AM

 

which is exactly 50 years ago today. November 1972 was the month that the
very first HP 3000 systems were shipped to customers. Shortly after this,
those initial deliveries were all hastily recalled when it quickly became
clear that they were not yet capable of living up to their specifications.
The 3000 however would go on to recover from this event and eventually
became one of HP's most successful and profitable product lines, and one of
the most beloved computer systems of all time, regularly beating out IBM,
DEC, DG, and others in customer satisfaction surveys.

 

For some stories about the earliest days of the platform, I refer you to the
words of Bob Green http://www.robelle.com/smugbook/classic.html and Bill
Foster http://www.teamfoster.com/hewlett-packard who were there.

 

The original "Classic" CISC HP 3000 systems live on today through Dave
Bryan's most excellent SIMH simulation http://simh.trailing-edge.com/hp/ and
I have a turn-key setup which will let you have your own 1980-vintage HP
3000 system up and running in a couple minutes which is downloadable from my
Google Drive at
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16vaNUrmfs2aQpjdQijG4PZmJaNu3hfcz (Save the
zip file using the download link in the upper right then extract it anywhere
convenient and see the README file for further instructions) This only
includes a SIMH binary for Windows, but you can also build a SIMH executable
from Dave Bryan's source above for your platform of choice and use the rest
of my infrastructure.

 

MPE Forever.

 

G


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