Older HP-UX Unix on PA-RISC

Unix and HP-UX were the standard operating systems when HP developed PA-RISC and the HP 9000 family. Many older HP-UX Unix versions were released in the 1980s for the many HP product families of the time.

HP-UX Old
1980s © Hewlett Packard

As early HP-UX and the 1980s preceded the internet age with digital documentation, not much information is left of these early versions.

Releases of early HP-UX were architecture-specific and versioning and numbering not very coherent: In 1988, HP-UX 3.0 for PA-RISC was released in parallel to HP-UX 6.0 for Motorola 68000. This confusing versioning was only mitigated in HP-UX 7 with split releases for 800 servers and the new 700 workstations introduced in HP-UX 8.

HP-UX 8

HP-UX 8 was an HP Unix operating system for 32-bit PA-7000 and PA-7100 RISC computers from HP, released in 1991. HP-UX code basis was different for workstations and servers in HP-UX 8 with separate releases for workstations (odd version numbers) and servers (even versions).

In 1991 and 1992, HP released the first HP 9000 700 workstations based on PA-7000 CPUs – HP-UX 8 was the first HP-UX for these workstations and was also the first HP Unix to support SMP multiprocessing, starting in server versions HP-UX 8.06.

HP-UX 8 supported systems, with some uncertainties
Class Computers Versions
HP 9000 700 720, 730, 750 8.01, 8.05, 8.07
HP 9000 700 705, 710 8.07
HP 9000 800 Early HP 9000 800 servers (PA-RISC 1.0) 8.00, 8.02, 8.06
HP 9000 F/G/H/I Series 800 Nova Servers (807-897) 8.02, 8.06
HP-UX 8.07
from archive.org

HP-UX 8.00 was released in January 1991. Not much more information is available these days other than it supporting some (most?) older HP 9000 800 servers.

HP-UX 8.01 was released in 1991 and only sold to developers to create/test programs. It supported early HP 9000 720, 730 and 750 workstations, with other hardware support unclear.

HP-UX 8.02 was released in April 1992 and was rewritten to work on the new, lettered HP 9000 800 Nova servers – the F, G, H and I-Class (8x7).

HP-UX 8.04 and HP-UX 8.08 were released in 1991 and 1992 and were described as security versions of 8.0 without additional hardware or software support.

HP-UX 8.05 was released in July 1991, a partial release, not considered complete and documented as interim at the time of shipments. Supported systems again included HP 9000 720, 730 and 750 workstation systems.

HP-UX 8.06 was released in 1992 as HP-UX 8.0 with additional code to handle multiple processors in HP 9000 870 with up to four PCX processors.

HP-UX 8.07 was released in January 1992 as final 8.0 release for workstations and supported the new HP 9000 705, 710 and 720, 730 and 750 systems. Hardware support was added for CRX, CRX-24, Dual-CRX, CD-ROM, 2.0GB drives, EISA cards (X.25, 802.5, FDDI), DDS tape drives. Software support was added for AAPI audio API

There might have been a Trusted Systems HP-UX 8.09 version with B1 security.

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HP-UX 7

HP-UX 7 was released in late 1989 and supported both HP 9000 Motorola 68000 and 800 PA-RISC systems for the first time: a major goal of HP-UX 7.0 was to converge operating systems for HP’s Motorola 68000-based Series 300 workstations and HP’s RISC-based Series 800 systems. HP-UX 7 was an attempt to unify HP Unix releases for its different platforms and harmonize versioning as the 1980s were all over the place: If you’re a Series 800 user, you may find it odd that your last release was 3.1 and you’re jumping to 7.0.

Both platforms (Motorola and PA-RISC) were supposed to be source code compatible in HP-UX 7, and the SAM system administration manager was ported from PA-RISC to Motorola. A first were also mixed clusters of diskless PA-RISC (800) and Motorola (300) nodes.

New features in HP-UX 7:

HP-UX 7 was compatible with System V Unix and selected features of BSD, Berkeley Unix. It was based on SVR3 and compatible with AT&T SVID 2 and also the DoD’s C2 trusted system requirements. And integration with the newly acquired Apollo Domain/OS was planned for future versions.

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HP-UX 3

HP-UX 3.0 was released in 1988, in parallel to the 68000-specific HP-UX 6.0, it supported (apparently) at least HP 9000 825, 835 and 850. The 3.x versions of HP-UX were apparently PA-RISC-only releases for early 800/600 Series servers.

Sources from 1989 mention several nasty bugs in an HP-UX 3.01 release on the 850 server. It also supported an HP implementation of X11.

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HP-UX 2

HP-UX 2, released in 1987, was either the first or second release for the PA-RISC Series 800 servers. It apparently supported the first HP 9000 840 and other early HP 9000 825, 835 and 850 servers. There were at least HP-UX 2.0 and HP-UX 2.1 releases for PA-RISC 1.0 systems, strongly BSD-influenced, that also supported workstation 825 and 835 with graphics hardware — when server 800s were marketed as 635SV and 645SV for a (confusing) time.

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HP-UX 1

Some sources mention a HP-UX 1.0 as being the first HP-UX for PA-RISC HP 9000 840, released in 1986. This HP-UX was supposedly strongly BSD-based, in contrast to the AT&T HP-UX 1.0 for Series 500. Since versioning and naming was in flux during that time, maybe it was a pre-release of the product that became HP-UX 2.0, bundled with first 840 servers.

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Other HP-UX

The first HP-UX 1.0 was released in 1983 for the HP FOCUS and was supposedly very different to other HP-UX versions, based on an AT&T kernel. There was even another HP-UX 1.0 in 1984 for the HP Integral PC (on ROM) before 1.0 for PA-RISC in 1986.

HP-UX 5.0 was released in 1985 and supported Motorola-based Series 200 and 300 as well as FOCUS HP 9000 500, for which it was the last supported HP-UX (5.3). HP-UX for FOCUS 500 Series was the first commercial UNIX supporting multi-processor, multi-user systems in the early 1980s. SMP for PA-RISC was supported only much later in HP-UX.

HP-UX 6.0 from 1986 was for Motorola 68000, before unifying with PA-RISC in 7.0.

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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. And archive.org has been a great resource with a growing list of HP-UX documentation.

Release notes

Other documents

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