HP 9000/720, 730 & 750
Overview
Project name:
- 720: Cobra
- 730: King Cobra
- 750: Coral
These machines were the first PA-RISC workstations, called Snakes. Still with Apollo
in their model names they were introduced around June 1991, starting at $11,990 and going up to
$118,190.
They were built into very solid cases, consisting of interlocking
exchangeable modules (sliders
).
The disk subsystem is integrated into its own slider
while being connected to the main
I/O board via a short external cable.
The 720 and 730 share the same backplane and I/O board and thus can be upgraded through
the exchange of the CPU board (upgrading to a 735 workstation is not possible, although the case is almost
identical and the CPU board would fit mechanically).
The CPU board contains three fin-cooled large-scale CMOS chips:
- CPU
- FPU
- Memory and I/O Controller (
MIOC
)
Internals
CPU
- 720: PA-7000 50MHz with 128/256KB off-chip I/D L1 cache
- 730: PA-7000 66MHz with 128/256KB off-chip I/D L1 cache
- 750: PA-7000 66MHz with 256/256KB off-chip I/D L1 cache
Chipset
- ASP chipset, featuring:
- NCR 53C700 8-bit single-ended SCSI-2
- Intel 82596DX 10Mb Ethernet controller
- WD 16C552 parallel
- NS 16550A compatible serial
- 512KB EPROM - the Boot ROM
- 8KB EEPROM for storing system configuration status etc.
- Intel 8042 microprocessor controlling:
- battery backed RTC
- system & user timers
- HP-HIL interface
- frontpanel system status LEDs
- Intel 82C501AD Ethernet transceiver
- Mongoose ASIC, EISA bus-adaptor
Buses
- VSC CPU/memory bus
- GSC system-level I/O bus
- EISA additional I/O expansion bus
- SGC expansion of the mainbus to the SGC expansion cards
- SCSI-2 narrow single-ended bus
Memory
- HP proprietary memory modules
- 720: 8 slots (rest probably the same as 730 — not sure however)
- 730: 8 slots and 16MB onboard
272MB (8×32+16) maximum - 750: 12 slots
768MB (12×64) maximum
Expansion
- 720/730:
- one SGC (DIO-II formfactor) expansion slot
- one EISA slot
- 750:
- Two SGC (DIO-II formfactor) expansion slots
- Four EISA slots
- See SGC expansion-cards
- See EISA expansion-cards
Drives
- 720/730: one tray for two 3.5″ Narrow SE 50-pin SCSI hard drives
- 750: one tray for two half-height 5.25″ Narrow SE 50-pin SCSI drives and two trays for one full-height 5.25″ Narrow SE 50-pin SCSI drive each
External Connectors
- 50-pin HD SCSI-2 single-ended
- Two DB9 male RS232C serial (up to 115200 baud)
- DB25 female parallel
- 15-pin AUI 10Mbit & 10Base2 BNC Ethernet
- Graphics depend on installed SGC framebuffer
- HP-HIL connector for input devices
- Jack for beep audio
References:
- LED error codes
- Model 720/730 owner’s guide (PDF, 1.8MB)
- Model 750 owner’s guide (PDF, 2.1MB)
Operating Systems
Benchmarks
| Model | SPEC92, int | SPEC92, fp | SPEC95, int | SPEC95, fp |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 720 | 36.4 | 58.2 | 1.20 | 2.00 |
| 730 | 47.8 | 75.4 | 1.50 | 2.30 |
| 750 | 48.1 | 75.0 | 1.50 | 2.30 |
Compare these with other results on the Benchmarks page.