______________________________________________________________________ Hewlett Packard Series 100 Frequently asked questions ________________________________________________________________________ Please note that this is a personal attempt to help users of HP series 100 systems. I have done my best to gather together what information is useful. Whilst I have done my best to get accurate information I cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies in this information. Please note also that although I work for Hewlett Packard and have had help from other HP employees in writing and verifying this list, the list is not an official statement by Hewlett Packard and has not been sanctioned by the company. Virtually every product mentioned in this list is obsolete. You may or may not be able to get them. Stating that a product is or was available does not mean that there are actually any in existence. ________________________________________________________________________ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Name: Mark Simms |Org: Hewlett-Packard Profession: Software Engineer | Computer Peripherals Bristol Unix-mail: mark@hpcpbla.bri.hp.com| United Kingdom --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Life is short and the ROM is full" (Bill Wickes) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Opinions expressed are my own and are not intended to be an official statement by Hewlett-Packard Company --------------------------------------------------------------------- A1) What is meant by the Hewlett Packard series 100? The series 100 is a group of business personal computers released in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were the first personal computers produced by HP targeted at the business market rather than the technical market. A2) What systems are included in the term series 100? The following computer systems were marketed under the series 100 umbrella: ?????? HP 120 ?????? HP 125 45611A HP 150A 45611B HP 150B or HP Touchscreen 45851A HP150 II or HP Touchscreen II or HP 150C 45710A HP 110 or HP Portable 45711B/F HP 110 Plus or HP Portable Plus ________________________________________________________________________ B1) What are the HP 120 and 125? These are CP/M based systems. They were sold mainly into businesses with HP3000 minicomputers. Other than that I don't know. Anyone got more information? B2) What are the differences between the HP 120 and 125? I don't know. Anyone got any input here? B3) If you have so little info, why do you include these systems? For completeness. Also, I would like to fill in the gaps. To be honest, I have never seen a question on one of these systems in a news group. ________________________________________________________________________ C1) What are the HP 150 series computers? The HP 150 was Hewlett Packard's attempt to produce a user friendly office computer. It is an MS-DOS based system, but is not IBM compatible. It made heavy use of function keys and the built in touch screen to attempt to produce easy to use software. The computer is built into the display unit with disk drives as external units. C2) What versions of MS-DOS came with the HP 150? The HP 150 originally shipped with MS-DOS version 2.01. This was rapidly revised to 2.11, with which most units shipped. Near the end of its life version 3.2 was shipped. C3) What other system software came with the HP150? The HP 150 uses a shell or interface program called the Personal Application Manager or PAM rather than the standard DOS command line shell. This allows the user to select installed applications from the screen. In addition there are utilities to install applications under PAM, format disks and configure peripheral devices. C4) What versions of the HP 150 are there? There are three versions of the HP 150, which are most strictly distinguished by their product numbers since they have had various different names: 45611A: The original HP 150. Normally known as the HP 150A after the release of the B version. 45611B: Updated version of the HP 150. This is normally known as the HP150B. Had new ROMs to support new disk drives. Also had an improved RFI shield to lessen radio interference. Many HP 150As had the ROM upgrade and a few had the new RFI shield installed as well. Around this time, HP started marketing the HP 150 as the HP Touchscreen in the USA. 45851A: Completely reworked version of the computer. Most obvious feature is the 12" display replacing the original 9" display. Also has 4 expansion slots rather than 2 and used an HP-HIL keyboard interface rather than the HP 150 specific one on earlier models. The touchscreen was an option. Marketed as the HP Touchscreen II in the USA and the HP 150 II elsewhere. Unofficially known as the HP 150C. Also, there are versions that are localised for different languages by having different keyboard layouts and different system software. The firmware in ROM on the system unit has support for all languages. C5) What processor does the HP 150 use? An 8 MHz Intel 8088. C6) What is the display resolution? The HP 150 has two independent display planes. The alphanumeric display has 27 lines of 80 columns. Usually, the 25th and 26th lines are used for function key display and the 27th for status indicators. Characters can have any combination of the following attributes: inverse video, underline, blinking, half bright. Text can be displayed as normal, bold or italic. The HP Roman8 character set is used. The graphics plane is a single bit deep 512 x 384 pixel display which may be displayed independently of the alphanumeric plane or may be displayed with it. The display has a 60 Hz refresh rate. C7) What interfaces come as standard on the HP150? All HP 150 computers come with an HP-IB (IEEE-488) interface and two RS232 serial ports. There is also a keyboard port that is for an HP150 specific keyboard on the HP150A/B or an HP-IL port for a 46020A or 46021A/B keyboard on the HP150 II. C8) What can be attached to the HP-IB port? The HP-IB interface can talk to eight devices at eight different addresses from 0 to 7. These devices can be disk drives, printers, tape drives or plotters. Each device must have a unique address. The address is usually set on the device using some form of switch. SS/80 disk drives (see below) can have a hard disk and a floppy disk at the same address. The two drives are then referred to as unit 0 and unit 1. Amigo disk drives containing a hard and floppy drive require two separate HP-IB addresses. The standard layout of addresses used on HP computers is as follows: 0 Primary disk drive 1 Printer 2 Second disk drive 3 Tape drive 4 Third disk drive 5 Plotter 6 Anything else 7 Anything else On the HP 150, the boot disk must be at HP-IB address 0. It is recommended to have the printer at HP-IB address 1 since the terminal emulator software and some applications assume this address. C9) How much RAM does an HP 150 come with? All HP 150 computers have 256k of RAM as standard. This is expandable to 640k of main memory using the following memory cards: 45630A: 128k RAM memory expansion 45631A: 256k RAM memory expansion 45632A: 384k RAM memory expansion 45915A: 384k RAM memory with HP-HIL interface Multiple boards can be used to upgrade the memory if necessary, up to a total of 640k including the standard memory. C10) Can expanded memory be used with the HP150? Lotus/Intel/Microsoft expanded memory is accessed in 64k pages from applications that have been specially writen to use it. The application must specify which page is required and then reads the required data from that page. A set of system calls were defined by Lotus, Intel and Microsoft to switch pages and to access the memory. A driver is required to interpret these system calls and access the hardware appropriately. Only applications that have been written to use the expanded memory system calls can benefit from it. This includes Lotus 123 version 2.01 on the HP150. Also, the driver for the HP150 allows the expanded memory to be used as a print buffer and a RAM disk in addition to being accessed from applications. The expanded memory is divided between the three functions at boot time. The following products can be used to add LIM compatible expanded memory: 45890A: Expanded memory board with 512k of RAM 45891A: Additional 256k RAM for board. Each board is capable of holding a total of 2M bytes of expanded RAM. Multiple boards can be used to increase the RAM available. C11) What other expansion cards are there? 45914A: HP-HIL card for the 150A and 150B. This allows the use of an HP-HIL mouse with these systems. This card is not needed with an HP 150 II since it uses an HP-HIL interface for the keyboard to which the mouse may also be attached. Note that the 45915A and 45890A both come with HP-HIL interfaces as well. 45643A: HP-IL and parallel printer interface board. This has a centronics compatible printer port with a non-standard connector. (Anyone got details on this?) It also has an HP-IL interface for communicating with portable systems and portable peripherals that use this interface. A special driver is required to use the parallel port with MS-DOS 2.11, but this is built into MS-DOS 3.2. A driver is needed to support HP-IL peripherals on all MS-DOS versions. An application is required to communicate with HP-IL based computer systems. 45640A: 1200 baud modem card for HP 150A/B 45640B: 1200 baud modem card for HP 150 II. C12) What is HP-HIL? HP-HIL is the Hewlett Packard human interface loop. It is an interface that is used to connect keyboards, mice, track balls, button boxes and other human input devices to a computer. Multiple devices may be daisy chained to the same interface. HP-HIL is used as the standard keyboard interface on the HP150 II and may be added via an expansion card to the HP150A and HP150B. HP-HIL keyboards are not supported on the HP150A and HP150B. For support of other HP-HIL devices, refer to the specific applications involved. C13) What disk drives can be used? Almost all mass storage devices connected to the HP 150 via the HP-IB interface. Three different command protocols were used by HP disk drives from this period. These were: Amigo: The original command protocol. CS/80: A sophisticated protocol used on high end drives. SS/80: A simplified version of CS/80. In the list below, you can see that the Amigo drives have single sided floppy drivea and the SS/80 ones have double sided floppy drives. Single sided and double sided are sometimes used to indicate Amigo and SS/80 drives for this reason. The HP 150A can only use Amigo drives. The ROM changes in the HP 150B allowed the use of SS/80 drives. No CS/80 disk drives could be used. The following is a list of supported disk drives: 9121S (Amigo) Single single sided floppy disk drive 9121D (Amigo) Twin single sided floppy disk drive 9122S (SS/80) Single double sided floppy disk drive 9122D (SS/80) Twin double sided floppy disk drive 9123D (SS/80) Twin double sided floppy disk drive without integral power supply 9127A (SS/80) Single 360k 5.25" floppy 9133V (Amigo) 5M byte hard disk / single sided floppy 9133XV (Amigo) 15M byte hard disk / single sided floppy 9133D (SS/80) 15M byte hard disk / double sided floppy 9133H (SS/80) 20M byte hard disk / double sided floppy 9153A (SS/80) 10M byte hard disk / double sided floppy 9153B (SS/80) 20M byte hard disk / double sided floppy The 9133H and 9153B only work under MS-DOS 3.2. Earlier versions of MS-DOS had a maximum disk size limit of 16M bytes. There are disk drives with 9154 and 9134 numbers which were the same as those with the equivalent 9153 and 9133 numbers, except that they only had a hard disk, no floppy disk. In addition, the 9114A and 9114B HP-IL double sided floppy disk drives were supported with the 45643A HP-IL/Parallel interface card and appropriate driver software. C14) What disk formats did the HP150 use? Under MS-DOS version 2.11, the HP150 uses two custom disk 3.5" formats, one for single sided disks and one for double sided disks. These were known as the 270k and 690k formats and could store 275,968 bytes and 709,632 bytes respecively. An IBM PC requires a special driver to read these disks. Under MS-DOS 3.2, the HP150 can read and write, but not boot from a standard 720k 3.5" IBM PC disk. This can store 737,280 bytes. The same grey double sided disks are used for this format as the 690k format. This format is supported in addition to supporting the two formats above. With the 9127A 5.25" disk drive, the HP150 can also read and write, but not boot from, 360k IBM PC 5.25" disks. Double sided disks and drives can be used with the single sided format, but the double sided format requires a double sided disk and drive. Single sided disks are typically blue and double sided ones are typically grey, although some manufacturers produced some blue double sided disks. The black high density 3.5" disks should not be used with the HP150. These disks are unreliable when formatted to the supported densities with the HP150's disk drives. C15) What tape drives were supported? The 9144A and 9142A tape drives were supported on the HP 150. These are both HP-IB devices. They require special driver and application software. C16) What printers can be used with the HP 150? Printers can be attached to the HP 150 via the serial interfaces, the HP-IB interface, the parallel interface on the 45643A card or the HP-IL interface on the 45643A card. HP-IB printers include the 2601A and 2602A daisy wheel printers, the 2225A ThinkJet and the 82905A and 82906A dot matrix printers. Serial printers include the 2601A and 2602A daisy wheel printers, the 2225D ThinkJet and the LaserJet series. Parallel printers include the 2225C and 2225P ThinkJet printers and the Epson dot matrix printers. The only HP-IL printer is the 2225B ThinkJet. The HP 150A and HP 150B could also use the 2674A thermal printer that fitted into the top of the computer. Most HP pen plotters could be used with the HP 150 using either a serial interface or the HP-IB interface. It is important to check application support for printers and plotters, particularly with later, more sophisticated software packages. C17) What software runs on an HP150? The HP150 is not compatible with the IBM PC. It will run any program that relies solely on MS-DOS functionality. It will not run any software that relies on IBM specific hardware accesses. Most software for the HP150 was written specifically for it. Much was written by HP, although several third party applications were also ported to it. C18) What word processors run on an HP150? HP produced two word processors for the HP150: MemoMaker and HP Word. MemoMaker is a simple word processor that can handle fixed width characters with bold and underline enhancements. Some HP150 systems bundled MemoMaker with the operating systems. Later versions were known as Executive MemoMaker and had some additional features such as graphics support. MemoMaker followed the HP150 user interface guidelines quite well. HP Word was originally written as a minicomputer based word processor that downloaded code into intelligent terminals. This was then ported to run on the HP150 without the minicomputer. It is a sophisticated word processor that can handle proportional fonts, various text enhancements, mail merge and envelope printing. It is not the easiest package to use, but can produce excellent results. WordPerfect was ported to the HP150 up to at least version 5.0. (Anyone know whether version 6 runs on the HP150?) This is the most modern word processor that runs on the HP150. Other word processors that had HP150 versions were Multimate, WordStar and Microsoft Word. C19) What other office software runs on the HP150? Lotus 123 versions 2.01 and 1A both had versions for the HP150, as did VisiCalc. Lotus Symphony version 1.1 had an HP150 version. Personal Card File and Executive Card Manager were simple data bases from HP. Also dBase II, PFS and Condor databases had HP150 versions. Drawing Gallery is a drawing application from HP. Other drawing packages that had HP150 versions include Picture Perfect, DiaGraph and the very early Series 100 Graphics. Charting Gallery is a companion package to Drawing Gallery for producing graphs. The two were sold together as the Gallery Collection. C20) What communications software runs on the HP150? The HP150 comes with a sophisticated terminal emulator in ROM. This terminal emulator uses HP escape sequences and is not compatible with the more common VT series terminals. A termcap entry for this terminal type for connection to Unix systems can be found on most HP-UX systems. Most of the communications packages for the HP150 use the same underlying terminal handling as the ROM terminal emulator. AdvanceLink and the older DSN link were produced by HP, mainly for communication with HP3000 minicomputers. Also there is a public domain version of Kermit 3.02 that works on the HP150. The communications package in Lotus Symphony can emulate a VT100 terminal. This is the only one I know of. C21) What is the PC emulator? The PC emulator is a piece of public domain software that allows a limited number of programs written for the IBM PC to run on the HP150. It emulates the IBM BIOS calls and translates them to HP150 AGIOS calls. This allows any IBM PC program that only uses BIOS and MS-DOS calls to run on the HP150. This is a very limited number of programs. C22) What is ExecuDesk? Towards the end of the life of the HP150, HP released a package to allow context switching between different applications. This was called ExecuDesk. By pressing a hot key, an application could be suspended and another one started. The original one could be resumed later with all context intact. It even allowed cutting and pasting text between applications. Applications had to be specially modified to run with ExecuDesk. The applications from HP with the Executive name tag such as Executive MemoMaker, Executive Card Manager and so on as well as the later versions of the Gallery software packages could run under ExecuDesk. C23) What programming languages were available? The programmers tool kit includes the Microsoft macro assembler and linker. Most of the Microsoft compilers, including Fortran, Cobol and Pascal, have HP150 versions. Lattice C is available. Various versions of Basic, including Microsoft Basic and GW Basic, have HP versions. Note that the HP150 Programmers Reference Manual is virtually essential for writing HP150 programs. C24) Are there any FTP sites for the HP150? Try ftp.funet.fi:/pub/misc/hp150. There is not much there, but there are one or two things. ________________________________________________________________________ D1) What are the HP 110 computers? The HP 110 computers are a series of portable MS-DOS computers. They are fairly heavy, but have exceptional battery life. They all run MS-DOS 2.11 from ROM and have ROM and RAM based filing systems. D2) What versions of the HP110 are there? 45710A: The original HP110. Also marketed in the USA as the HP Portable. This had an 80 column 16 line (What is the graphics resolution?) monochrome LCD display without any backlighting. It had a simple word processor, MemoMaker, a terminal emulator and Lotus 123 version 1A in ROM. It has 272k bytes of RAM that can be divided between system RAM and RAM disk. Applications can be executed directly from ROM so the RAM usage is highly efficient. There is no way to upgrade this system other than by adding applications to the rather small RAM disk. 45711X: The HP 110 Plus. Marketed in the USA as the HP Portable Plus. This has an 80 column 25 line or 480 x 200 pixel monochrome LCD display without any backlighting. It has MS-DOS in ROM, but no applications. It has two drawer slots for installing additional RAM or applications in ROM. It also has a modem slot for the optional 1200 baud 82983A/B modem. It comes in three versions RAM sizes each of which could have an optional 1200 baud modem. This gave the following versions: 45711A 128k, with modem 45711B 128k, without modem 45711C 256k, with modem 45711D 256k, without modem 45711E 512k, with modem, 45711F 512k, without modem. In addition there were localised versions with different national keyboards and different language system software. These added the following letter suffixes to the part numbers above: A: South African B: English-European* D: German* F: French H: Dutch K: English-International* N: Norwegian* P: Swiss-German* Q: Swiss-French* S: Swedish* U: U.K. W: Belgian* Y: Danish* Z: Italian* Note that the countries with an asterix (*) did not have an approved modem, so no modem could be ordered with the unit. D3) Were there different versions of the system ROMs? There were two versions of the systems ROMs for the HP 110 plus. The version A had a bug that could erase the RAM disk under some circumstances. To determine the version of an HP 110 plus, hold down the CTRL and SHIFT keys and press the RESET key. This reboots the system. The main ROM ID will be AAAAAAA or BBBBBBB for the version A and B ROMs respectively. D4) What battery saving modes are there on the HP110? After 1 second waiting for keyboard input, the CPU clock is stopped. When the next key is pressed, the CPU starts again. After a configurable time out between 30 seconds and 30 minutes, the display blanks. If the battery drops below 20%, a low battery message appears, whatever application you are in. If the battery goes below 5%, the system enters deep sleep with all hardware disabled. It can maintain the RAM disk for several days in this mode. D5) What interfaces are there on the HP110? The HP110 and HP110+ have an HP-IL interface and an RS232 interface. The version of the original HP110 marketed in the USA has a built in 300 baud modem. The HP110+ has a slot for the optional 1200 baud 82983A/B modem. D6) What is HP-IL? HP-IL is a general purpose interface for use on low power and portable devices. It allows up to 32 devices to be connected in a loop. All HP-IL devices have two connectors, one for the loop in and one for the loop out. One of the devices on the loop, usually a computer, is the loop master. There are no address or configuration switches to set as devices are addressed starting at the loop master and going round the loop. The loop must be complete for the interface to function correctly. All devices must be powered up on the loop, although they may be in sleep mode. The HP-IL interface on the HP 110 and HP110+ can be used to attach a 9114A or 9114B disk drive, a 2225B ThinkJet printer or a 7470A plotter. It can also be used to allow file transfer between HP110 computers and between an HP110 and an HP150 or IBM PC compatible with the necessary hardware and software. It can be used to attach an HP 82169A HP-IB/HP-IL converter to connect up HP-IB printers and disk drives. It can also be used to attach an HP 82164A HP-IL/RS232C converter to connect serial printers and modems. Also there is an HP 82985A HP-IL/video interface that will display a monochrome image on an NTSC display. D7) What disk format was used by the 9114 disk drives? The 9114A and 9114B used the HP150's 690k format on double sided disks. This format cannot be read by an IBM PC without a special driver. D8) What is the pinout on the serial connector? The serial connector is a female 9 pin sub-miniature D-type with the following connections: 1 CD Data Terminal Ready 2 BA Transmitted Data 3 BB Received Data 4 CA Request to Send 5 CB Clear to Send 6 CC Data Set Ready 7 AB Signal Ground 8 CF Carrier Detect 9 CE Ring Indicator D9) What AC adapter is required for the HP 110 computers? HP sold the following AC adapters that worked with a range of HP portable systems: 82059D 110V USA 82066B 220V Europe 82067B 220V United Kingdom 82068B 220V Australia 82069B 110V Middle East These supplied 6V AC via an HP specific plug. D10) How long could the HP110 computers run from batteries? The original HP 110 was conservatively specified at 16 hours continuous activity. The HP 110 plus was similar. This beats any modern laptop hands down. D11) What are the "drawers" for the HP 110+? The HP 110+ has two slots for expansion cards known as drawers. There are two types of drawers: There is the HP 82982A ROM drawer for applications in ROM. Up to 8 ROMs of up to 128k could be installed in one ROM drawer. There is the 82981K RAM drawer that was shipped with 128k of RAM and could be upgraded in steps of 128k using 82984A RAM upgrades. In addition, late in the life of the HP 110+, HP produced the 82992K 1M RAM card. This is not expandable and can not be used with another RAM expansion, but can be used with the ROM drawer. D12) Was there a backlit display for the HP110? A backlit display was produced for the HP 110 plus by a third party. This seriously reduced the battery life of the system so few were actually installed. The display on the HP 110 and 110 plus was sufficiently clear that a backlit display was not needed except in special circumstances. D13) What software runs on the HP110 computers? The HP110 and HP110+ are not IBM compatible. They will run programs that use only MS-DOS system calls. All other programs must be versions that are specially written for the HP110 or HP110+. D14) What software is available specifically for the original HP110? Not much. Due to the small amount of available RAM, very little add on software was commercially produced for the original HP 110. It had MemoMaker, Lotus 123 and a terminal emulator built in. There was some contributed software produced for the HP110, which was distributed by Personalised Software. D15) What software was available for the HP110+? HP produced a version of its MemoMaker word processor. Also, Microsoft Word, and MultiMate word processors had HP110+ versions. WordPerfect was ported to the HP110+ up to at least version 5.0. (Anyone know about version 6?) This is the most modern word processor available on the HP110+. All of these were available on ROM. WordPerfect 5.0 is also available on disk. Lotus 123 versions 1A and 2.01 had HP110+ versions as did the Executive Card Manager data base from HP. These were both only on ROM. VisiCalc, Condor and dBase II are available on disk. Reflection and TermPlus communications programs are available on ROM. There was also some contributed software. ________________________________________________________________________ E1) Where can I get any of this stuff? For many years, Personalised Software supported the HP110 and HP150 computers. They then renamed their business to Classic Computers. When they started supporting more modern systems, they sold their HP110 and HP150 business to Sherlock Systsems and Solutions who set up Sherlock Classic. They can be contacted at: Sherlock Classic P.O. Box 489 Tel: +1-216-848-3040 Barberton OH 44203 Fax: +1-216-848-4515 USA They stock a number of new and second hand products for the HP150 and HP110+ in particular. Alternatively, try posting in the comp.sys.hp.misc news group. E2) Why should I stick with such old computers? They are inexpensive. They are reliable. They are environmentally friendly. They are cute. They do the job. Clearance sale on HP Series 100 hardware and software _________________________________________________________________ Back to OK! Software's Main Page _________________________________________________________________