Dear enthusiasts of HP series 200 ( and early 300 ) computers,

probably you know about the HP BASIC 5.1 DIO card HP 98603B:
http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=1164

These boards are very useful, but also very rare. Version 5.1 is well documented and probably the best match for the earlier machines ( series 200, 310 and 320). It is also the latest BASIC version that exists in ROM form.
Some of the series 200 computers have very few DIO slots (9816: just two), so it is a problem to equip the computer with sufficient RAM.

There comes Dominique Berget's combo board to the rescue:
A combination of BASIC 5.1 ROM and 4 MB of RAM ( which should be more than sufficient for a series 200 computer), which occupies just one DIO slot.

See the attached picture of the beautifully designed board.

The boards are well-tested, I can recommend them. Dominique sells these boards for € 160.- plus shipping per piece.
( For a very rare HP 98603B, along with a rare 4 MB board, which weren't made by HP, only by third party companies like Infotek, you'd probably have to pay much more - and still need to occupy two slots).

If you are interested, let me know ( or him directly ), then he can decide about a production run.

Worth to mention: I don't have any financial benefit from that "promotion"!

Michael.

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: VintHPcom@groups.io [mailto:VintHPcom@groups.io] Im Auftrag von Paul Berger
Gesendet: Samstag, 1. Dezember 2018 20:36
An: VintHPcom@groups.io
Betreff: Re: [VintHPcom] BASIC 6.2, status and two dumb questions



On 2018-12-01 12:28 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:

Hi guys. I've gotten my floppies written, and am able to boot BASIC
6.2 on my -382. Thank you Paul for helping me get this far.

It's interesting, though, that it will not boot from the internal
floppy drive. It says "BAD HARDWARE" and just won't boot from it, or
even see it as bootable (i.e., no info on the upper right portion of the
display). I got past that by booting from an HPIB-attached 9122C, which
seems to work fine.

I've blown the dust out of the internal floppy drive, and cleaned the
heads. No change. Do I simply have a failed or worn-out internal
floppy drive, or have I missed something?

My next question is a more important one: I've downloaded all of the
6.2 manuals from hpmuseum.net (thank you, Dave Collins!) but I don't see
an installation manual in there. Is there somewhere else I should be
looking for installation documentation?

This is interesting new territory for me; I've only ever run HP-UX on
these machines. I'm putting this one together to run some
calibration/verification software for HP/Agilent test equipment.

Thanks,
-Dave

Does the floppy appear to try to read the diskette? On the 382 the
floppy is a SCSI device as I am sure you noticed, and since your disk
would be on the same bus, that would suggest that the SCSI bus is ok. I
have not seen an actual 382 but from what I have been able to find out
there where two versions of internal SCSI cable. One of them supported
external devices and may need an external terminator, the other would
only support internal devices and appeared to have a terminator crimped
onto the end of the cable. The other thing to watch out for is address
conflicts.

I don't recall noticing that the install manual was missing from the
6.2 set. I do have a hard copy install manual, but it is perfect bound
and I have no way to scan it. For most things the 5.1 manual would do
just as well. I did read through the section that talks about the HFS
file system and I did not see anything about a limit to disk size
however in the early 90s when 6.2 came out a 1GB disk you could fit in a
382 was unheard of.

Paul.





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