HP-UX Unix on PA-RISC
HP-UX 10

HP-UX 10 is the HP Unix operating system for 32-bit PA-RISC workstations and servers released by HP between 1995 and 1997.
It had a short shelf-life due to fears of possible Y2K bugs,
for which HP offered an upgrade path to HP-UX 11 and exchange CDs.
HP-UX 10 in its various guises supported almost all 32-bit HP 9000 700 series workstations, most lettered systems and most older HP 9000 800 servers. It was POSIX 1003.1, 1003.2 and SVID3 compliant. HP-UX 10.01 was the last Unix to officially support 1980s PA-RISC 1.0 computers, while HP-UX was extended to 64-bit with HP-UX 11.00 in 1997
HP-UX 10.20
HP-UX 10.20 was released in August 1996 as the HP Unix that supported almost all 32-bit PA-RISC workstations and servers. For HP-UX, 10.20 was pretty fast on supported machines with at least 64 MB RAM. It was discontinued by HP in 2002 and obsoleted in 2003 after shipping multiple releases.

- Support for 32-bit PA-7x00 processors and 64-bit PA-8x00 systems in 32-bit mode
- Large file size of up to 128 GB in HFS, JFS and LVM, Fibre Channel storage
- DHCP server and client
- Full X11R6, CDE graphical environment
- UNIX95 branded
Different HP-UX 10.20 releases were made for HP 9000 700 workstations and HP 9000 800 servers. Several extensions were shipped between 1997 and 1999 to add hardware support, most often through HP-UX Additional Core Enhancements (ACEs).
- HP 9000 Servers (10.20): In July and August 1997, Hardware Extensions CDs were shipped to extend support for T600, K370, and K570 servers and improve fibre-channel (FC) support.
- HP 9000 Workstations (10.20): Multiple Additional Core Enhancements (ACEs) were shipped to extend hardware support and add new features to 10.20:
- ACE 9912: Add support for B2000, C3600, J5600, J6000, J7000, VISUALIZE-fxe, IDE CD drives, USB devices
- ACE 9906: Add support for B1000, C3000, and J5000 workstations and USB; Euro, LVD SCSI, Super I/O
- ACE 9806: Add support for C360 workstation, PCI Visualize-EG graphics, Visualize-fx hardware texture mapping, Y2K fixes
- ACE 9804: Add support for J2240 workstations
- ACE 9802: Add support for Visualize-EG 2D, fixes for Y2K compliance,
- ACE 9707: Add support for OpenGL; B132L+, B180L, C200, C240 workstations, Ultra SCSI, 100 Base-T Ethernet, Visualize-FX
- Hardware Enhancements (10.20): The more focused Hardware Extensions (HWE) enabled new hardware in HP-UX 10.20 or enhanced new functionality through software.
This included adding support for new workstation and server hardware to HP-UX 10.20.
- HWE 1.0 (July 1997): Support for T600, K370, K570
- HWE 1.1 (February 1998): Support for T600, K370, K570, K380, K580
- HWE 2.0 (April 1998): Support for HSC-HP/PB, NFS PV3, AutoFS, CacheFS
- HWE 3.0 (April 1999): Support for A180/A180C, Y2K
safe cold install path
- HP 9000 Servers (10.30): Released in 1997 with updates and enhancements to 10.20, HP-UX 10.30 focused on 800 Series servers.
It added kernel (POSIX) threads, support for NFS version 3 (PV3), streams in TCP/IP, ASE, PPP and Y2K compliance.
HP-UX 10.30 was
not intended
for workstations, discontinued in 1998 and obsoleted in 1999.
Generally, HP-UX 10.20 supported most 32-bit HP 9000 models. Hardware Enhancements bundles (HWE) were shipped with ACEs to support newer PA-8x00 based systems in 32-bit. Most HP graphics options, I/O devices and networking adapters integrated on HP 9000s were supported. Support for PA-RISC 1.0 and older servers was dropped.
Class | Computers |
---|---|
HP 9000 700 | 705, 710, 712, 715, 720, 730, 750, 725, 735, 755, 742i, 743i, 744, 745i, 745, 747i, 748i, 748 |
HP Visualize | C100, C110,C132L, C160L, C160, C180, C200, C240, C360, C3000, C3600, J200, J210, J280, J282, J2240, J5000, J5600, J6000, J7000 |
Portables | RDI PrecisionBook, SAIC Galaxy 1100 |
HP 9000 A-Class | A180, A180C |
HP 9000 B-Class | B132L, B160L, B132L+, B180L+, B1000, B2000 |
HP 9000 D-Class | D210, D220, D230, D250, D270, D280, D310, D320, D330, D350, D370, D380, D390 |
HP 9000 E-Class | E25, E35, E45, E55 |
HP 9000 F/G/H/I | Series 800 Nova Servers (807-897) |
HP 9000 K‑Class | K100, K200, K210, K220, K250, K260, K360, K370, K380, K400, K410, K420, K450, K460, K570, K580 |
HP 9000 R-Class | R380, R390 |
HP 9000 T-Class | T500, T520, T600 |
HP Agilent | HP Agilent 16600A, 16700A, 16700B, 16702A, 16702B |
Not supported | All PA-RISC 1.0 systems HP 9000 840, 822, 835, 850, 870, 890 and so on |
HP-UX 10.10
HP-UX 10.10 was released in 1996 as feature-only release with few enhancements to HP-UX 10.00. It was discontinued by HP in 2000 and obsoleted in 2002.
New features and upgrades in HP-UX 10.10 included:
- CDE, the Common Desktop Environment GUI
- HP MC ServiceGuard
- HP Process Resource Manager
- Support for the HP Visualize graphics accelerators
- UNIX95 (SPEC 1170) branding
Supported hardware is unclear but probably the same as HP-UX 10.00. HP-UX 10.10 was the last stable OS release for several older Series 800 servers: 840S, 825S, 835S/SE, 845S/SE, 850S, 855S, 860S, 865S, 870S/x00, 822S, 832S, 842S, 852S, 890.
HP-UX 10.01
HP-UX 10.0 (or 10.01) was released in 1995, first as on-demand New Business Release (NBR) for new HP 9000 acquisitions and automatically shipped as General Business Release (GBR) for existing installations. There were different HP-UX 10 releases for workstations and server, discontinued in 2000 and obsoleted in 2003.
File system layout in HP-UX 10 was moved to a SVR4 (System V Release 4), which was becoming a UNIX standard
in the 1990s.
Software and licenses integrated into HP-UX included OSF Distributed Computing Environment (DCE), Streams and XTI over TCP/IP (ARPA/9000
), NFS, NCS, X.11, Motif and HP VUE (Visual User Environment).
HP-UX 10.0 was binary compatible from HP-UX 9.0.
New features and upgrades in HP-UX 10.0 included:
- Improvements to Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP)
- Support for SMP in HP 9000 workstations
- Logical Volume Manager (LVM) software disk striping
- Journaled File System (JFS)
- Better I/O on 800 servers, Memory Mapped files and Dynamic Buffer Cache
- NFS version 4.2 and NFS booting support
- Focus on CD-ROM media for distributing HP-UX to move away from tapes (CD Now)
HP-UX 10.0 supported all currently orderable HP 9000 Server and Workstation systems
and added support in the General Business Release for more systems.
Class | Computers |
---|---|
HP 9000 700 | 705, 710*, 712, 715, 720, 730, 750*, 725, 735, 755, 742i, 743i, 745i, 747i, 748i |
HP Visualize | C100, C110, J200, J210^ |
HP 9000 800 | Early HP 9000 800 servers* (PA-RISC 1.0) |
HP 9000 E-Class | E25, E35, E45, E55 |
HP 9000 F/G/H/I | Series 800 Nova Servers (807-897) |
HP 9000 K‑Class | K-Class^ |
HP 9000 T-Class | 890, T500 |
Not supported | HP 9000 635, 645, 808 and 815, 825CHX, 825SRX, 834CH, 835SRX and so on |
HP kept supporting HP-UX 9.0 in parallel to 10.0 due to the large installed HP-UX 9 userbase. When HP-UX 10.0 was released, HP supported new workstations and graphics in HP-UX 9.07 with a clear upgrade path. At HP-UX 10.01 discontinuance in 2000, HP recommended directly upgrading to 11.00 (and not 10.20).
HP-UX 10.0 was probably the last HP-UX to support early HP 9000 800 servers based on PA-RISC 1.0, though it is not totally clear which systems were supported.
Documentation
Most of the documentation and references disappeared during the 2010s from the web. Much information has been gleaned from (slowly disappearing) USEnet postings from the 1980s and early 1990s in comp.sys.hp.hpux, especially for older versions of HP-UX. For a while now, archive.org has a growing list of HP-UX documentation.
Software
- HP-UX Software with information on commercial and open source software for Unix
Manuals
- Installing and Updating HP-UX 10.20, ACE and Hardware Extensions: HP 9000 Computers Hewlett-Packard Company (April 1998, B2355-90173) bitsavers
- Installing and Updating HP-UX 10.x HP 9000 Computers bitsavers
Websites
- HP-UX server support matrix (HP-UX 11.x support for servers) Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (2024)
- HP-UX update matrix archive.org (HP-UX 10.20 and 11.x support for workstations) Hewlett-Packard Development Company (2003: accessed March 2009)
- HP-UX version and server model support matrix archive.org (HP-UX 11 support for servers) Hewlett-Packard Company (2001: accessed April 2009)
- docs.hp.com - Technical documentation, good entry to HP-UX documentation archive.org
- hp-ux history archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (2002: mirror accessed January 2024)
- Support Matrix - HP-UX Workstations Processors, OS Versions and Graphics archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (2001: mirror accessed January 2024)
Release notes
- hp-ux operating system releases archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (2002: mirror accessed January 2024)
- HP-UX 10.0 Overview archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (2002: mirror accessed January 2024)
- HP-UX 10.0 Supported Hardware and Software archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (2002: mirror accessed January 2024)
- HP-UX 10.30 and 10.20 Operating System Introduction Plan archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (2002: mirror accessed January 2024)
- HP-UX 10.20 Hardware Systems Supported archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (2002: mirror accessed January 2024)
- Exploring HP-UX Releases and Media archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (2001: mirror accessed January 2024)
- Exploring HP-UX Releases and Media archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (1998: mirror accessed January 2024)
- Release Note for HP-UX 10.20 Hardware Extensions 3.0 (April 1999) archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (2002)
Other documents
- HP-UX FAQ (comp.sys.hp.hpux FAQ) Ian Springer (February 2008: accessed January 2024 on faqs.org)
- INFORMATION ON HP9000 SERVERS AND WORKSTATIONS Hewlett Packard Company (1997 (1999): accessed January 2009)
- Much information has been gleaned from many USEnet postings in comp.sys.hp.hpux, especially on the older versions, from between 1988 and 1998
- HP Developer Resource Document Library archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (1999: mirror accessed January 2024)
- ACE Software Archive, software.hp.com archive.org, Hewlett-Packard Company (2001: mirror accessed January 2024)
Pictures © Hewlett Packard, scans from product brochures, from hpmuseum.net and 1000bit.it