No RISC No Fun

HP Agilent 16600 and 16700 PA-RISC logic analyzers added

By Paul Weissmann on 4 January 2020

The HP Agilent 16600 and 16700 series are logic analyzers with PA-RISC processors sold by HP and Agilent, based on PA-RISC HP 9000 workstation architecture from the mid-1990s. These were the successors to the Agilent 16500 series analyzers and used in engineering and science for measurements, logic analysis, prototyping and verification. All variants are based on the same 16700A or 16700B main logic board built into different chassis’ with the system architecture probably related to the B132L/B160L workstations with some custom I/O hardware and buses.

• 16600A: Small base system with integrated channel probes.
• 16700A: Base system in a modular frame, with measurement and emulation slots.
• 16700B: Updated 16700 base system with faster components.
• 16701A/16701B: An expansion frame to extend the 16700 series systems.
• 16702A: Integrated 16700 in a compact case with LCD display.
• 16702B: Updated 16702 integrated system with faster components.

These 16600 and 16700 were released between 1998 and 2000 by HP then Agilent and ran stock HP-UX with Agilent extension and HP LOGIC.

Updates to PA-RISC and HP 9000 systems pages

By Paul Weissmann on 3 January 2020

Various updates have been done and integrated into OpenPA, including new content, corrections and streamlining:

• PA-RISC Computers and HP 9000 and PA-RISC Computers Story pages updated and revised, content additions, some restructuring and harmonization between the pages.
• HP 9000 500 FOCUS system page updated and revised (that was some seriously old content!).
• HP 9000 743/744 VME page updated and information on VXI systems added.
• US Navy DTC and TAC information added: HP 9000 computers were used in several US Navy contracts as tactical computers, HP 9000 520 (9020C) as DTC and JOTS computer in the 1980s, HP 9000 720, 730 workstations in the TAC-3 program, and a large range of workstations and servers in the TAC-4 program, the company’s largest-ever federal contract at the time, with 712, C-Class and J-Class workstations D-Class and K-Class servers and SAIC Galaxy portables.
• Historic list prices updated and added again to some system pages again – rather unreliable data after all these years. This is ongoing.
• Additions and fixes to the language on the individual HP 9000 systems pages

Twenty years OpenPA.net!

By Paul Weissmann on 1 December 2019

OpenPA.net turns twenty this year! It's been a long and interesting ride since this site was founded in December 1999, at a time of the Internet when Google just started and Wikipedia did not exist yet.

The idea was to build a central single resource for information on PA-RISC Unix computers, which became available more widely in the hobbyist market in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Development and contributions to OpenPA.net peaked in the early years of 1999-2002 with a community around PA-RISC and open source systems. Most of the PA-RISC and HP 9000 content was written and completed in the early 2000s. Updates slowly declined from the mid-2000s on, as did PA-RISC support in open and commercial operating systems. The site has been maintained since then to catch errors and add missing pieces here and there.