At 10:44 PM 12/13/98 -0800, Aaron Christopher Finney wrote:
>Thanks again to all on the previous help with the 3000/37 machine. I've
>acquired a terminal for it...at least I think I have. Here's what I've
>got:
>
>HP2649a terminal with these cards -

[remainder snipped]

[Note:  The bulk of this message is seemingly endless drivel about the
history of HP terminals.  You have been warned.  :)  ]

If you wind up looking for a replacement console, the 2645 was HP's "latest
and greatest" terminal in the 264x series.  It's identical to the 2649 in
architecture, but set up with cards and firmware simply to be a terminal.
As others have commented, the 2649 was designed to be "customer
customizable" as an OEM platform in much the way that Wirt's company, AICS
Research, created word processors from it.  Another example (just for those
truly interested in the trivia of ancient computer history  ;) is the law
firm accounting system implemented years ago by a former employer of mine,
CompuTrac, who built a client/server kind of application based on them in
the late 70s and early 80s using custom firmware and other esoteric stuff
(such as a built from scratch OS on the 2649, another on the HP1000 and a
proprietary language called "FIB" which stands for "Fast Interpreted BASIC"
but wasn't very BASIC-like and which ran on the custom firmware and OS on
the 2649 "terminals").

Anyway, the 264x line was getting a bit long of tooth at the time the 37
was introduced.  The 262x family of terminals were HP's next iteration in
the terminal market, with the 2622 as the common version and the 2624B and
the 2628A as the fancy versions...  and not to be remiss, the 2626W which
doubled as a 4 connection terminal somehow (I never did figure out how to
connect more than two at a time since there was no network connection and
only two serial ports. :) and as a word-processor workstation for an
HP3000-based application called HPword which has absolutely no resemblance
to M$word.

However, IIRC, by the time the Series 37 was introduced the 262x line had
been replaced by the 239x line, with the 2392 as the common version and the
2394 and later 2396 and 2398 as the improved flavors.

Any of these beasts will serve pretty well as the console for a 37 but if
you are interested in having a console that would have been sold with a new
37, then I think you should be looking for a 2392.  Of course, the newer
terminals are more likely to still be in service somewhere and hence less
likely to be found for little or nothing on the scrap heaps of cumputerdom.

Good luck in your quest.  :)
--
Jeff Woods
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