HP 9000/705 & 710

Overview
Internals
External connectors
References
Operating systems
Benchmarks

Quick Facts
CPU	1 PA-7000 35/50 MHz
Caches	96 KB L1
RAM	64 MB
Drives	2 SCSI
Expansion	None
Bandwidth	CPU 200 MB/s Sys 100 MB/s
I/O	10E SCSI 2 serial parallel VGA HIL audio

Overview

The HP 9000/705 and HP 9000/710 are miniaturized versions of the original PA-RISC Snakes (720, 730 and 750). The internals of these basically were taken over, with some significant changes:

Smaller I/D caches
Lower CPU clock rate
Different (narrower) connection to the memory subsystem
Integration of several subsystems (graphics, SCSI, Ethernet) onto a single mainboard
Reduced expansion possibilities

Introduced: 1992 for $7,490 (HP 9000/710)

Internals

CPU

705: PA-7000 35 MHz with 32/64 KB off-chip I/D L1 cache
710: PA-7000 50 MHz with 32/64 KB off-chip I/D L1 cache

Chipset

ASP chipset
- NCR 53C700 8-bit single-ended SCSI-2
- Intel 82596DX 10 Mbit Ethernet controller
- WD16C552 parallel
- NS16550A compatible serial
- 512 KB EPROM - the Boot ROM
- 8 KB EEPROM for storing system configuration status etc.
- Intel 8042 microprocessor controlling:
  - battery backed RTC
  - system & user timers
  - HP-HIL interface
  - frontpanel system status LEDs
Viper memory and I/O controller, low-cost version implemented in two chips
Intel 82C501AD Ethernet transceiver
PSB2160 CODEC for 8-bit mono audio

Buses

PBus processor/memory bus, 200 MB/s at 50 MHz (710), 140 MB/s at 35 MHz (705)
VSC main system bus, 100 MB/s at 25 MHz (710), 70 MB/s at 17.5 MHz (705)
GSC system-level I/O bus
SCSI-2 narrow single-ended bus

Memory

HP-proprietary 72-pin SIMMs
Eight sockets
16 MB (4×4) minimum, 64 MB maximum

Memory has to installed in quartets:
first in the even slots (0, 2, 4, 6), then in the odd slots (1, 3, 5, 7):

	    front
.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.
|  ext.      int.       ###|
|  drive     drive      ###|
|                       ###|
|                       ###|
|                       ###|
| 3 x-----x  7 x-----x  ###<--Power
| 2 x-----x  6 x-----x  ###|  Supply
| 1 x-----x  5 x-----x  ###|
| 0 x-----x  4 x-----x  ###|
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
	     back

Expansion

No expansion slots

Drives

One tray for a 3.5″ 50-pin Narrow SE SCSI hard drive
One tray for a half-height 5.25″ 50-pin Narrow SE SCSI drive, external accessible

External connectors

50-pin HD SCSI-2 single-ended
Two DB9 male RS232C serial
DB25 female parallel
15-pin AUI 10 Mbit & 10Base2 BNC Ethernet
HD15 VGA
HP-HIL connector for input devices
Two phone jacks (microphone, headphones)

References:

Articles

High-Performance Design for Low-Cost PA-RISC Desktops (.pdf) pp. 56-63 Craig Fink et al (August 1992: Hewlett-Packard Journal)

Operating systems

HP-UX: every release from 10.01-10.20 works.
- 10.20: runs ok on them, but you should get the maximum of RAM.
- 11.00: also could work, but a) it is unsupported, b) it is very slow and c) some HP-UX patches can leave the system in an unrunnable state.
Linux: works.
OpenBSD: works.

Benchmarks

Model	SPEC92, int	SPEC92, fp	SPEC95, int	SPEC95, fp
705	21.9	33.0
710	31.6	47.6	0.99	1.44

Compare these with other results on the Benchmarks page.

← back to computers

↑ up