HPBSD on PA-RISC
Overview
HPBSD is an original 4.3BSD Unix operating system with additions from 4.4BSD and local modifications developed at the University of Utah. HPBSD was ported between the late-1980s and mid-90s by Mike Hibler and others. The PA-RISC version grew out of a port of 4.3BSD to 68k-based HP 9000/300 and 400 systems.
The University of Utah was a center of PA-RISC operating system research in the 1990s, with PA-RISC ports of Mach 3 and Mach 4, later in other open source ports.
In the 1990s, HPBSD was a stable alternative operating systems on PA-RISC, but contained AT&T and HP source code and was never freely available. Organizations with necessary license agreements with HP and AT&T were able to obtain bootable releases of HPBSD but distribution outside of the University of Utah was limited. It demonstrated that other operating systems and especially BSD Unix could be developed for PA-RISC independently, setting the scene for the later OpenBSD port.
Systems support
HPBSD supported the original PA-RISC 1.1 32-bit HP 9000 700 workstation computers and was later extended for specific C-Class and J-Class workstations.
- HP 9000 705, 710, 720, 730, 750 based on PA-7000 PA-RISC processors
- HP 9000 715, 725, 735, 755 based on PA-7100 processors
- HP 9000 712, 715, 725/100 based on PA-7100LC processors
- HP Visualize J200, J210[XC], C100, C110 based on PA-7200 processors
- Early HPBSD: HP 9000 835 server PA-RISC 1.0 NS-1 processor
Hardware support
HPBSD supported most on-board hardware, but only few specific expansion or third-party devices which were used at Utah University.
- SCSI internal single-ended, internal fast-wide-differential, GSC based fast-wide-differential, and EISA fast-differential drives and DAT tapes
- Built in Ethernet, SGC FDDI board
- HP GRX, CRX and Artist graphics
- HIL and PS/2
- HP audio
- RS232 serial
- HP ASP, HP LASI and HP U2 chipsets
Releases
Releases of HPBSD were limited to the University of Utah and a few organizations with necessary license agreements. There were few major releases between the 1980s and 1990s of HPBSD:
- HPBSD (800): Support for PA-RISC 1.0 and HP 9000/800 servers, around 1989/1990
- HPBSD (700): Support for PA-RISC 1.1 and HP 9000/700 workstations, early 1990s
- HPBSD 2.0: Stable support for PA-RISC workstations and 4.4BSD extensions, 1993
- Extensions: HP Visualize C1x0 and J2x0 around 1997
- Extensions: HP-UX 10.20 compatibility, JDK and EISA Fast Ethernet, until 1999
Documentation
- HPBSD: Utah’s 4.3bsd port for HP9000 series machines Original homepage of the HPBSD project. Mike Hibler (July 1999: University of Utah)
- The Utah PA-RISC Code Snapshot Original webpage of the project. Mike Hibler (2002: University of Utah)