HP 9000/720, 730 and 750
| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Introduced | 1991 |
| CPU | 1 PA-7000 50/66 MHz |
| Caches | 384-512 KB L1 |
| RAM | 272 MB (730) 768 (750) |
| Design | ASP |
| Drives | 2 SCSI (720/730) 4 SCSI (750) |
| Expansion | 1 SGC, 1 EISA (720/730) 2 SGC, 4 EISA (750) |
| Bandwidth | CPU 264 MB/s (730/750) CPU 200 MB/s (720) Sys 132 MB/s (730/750) Sys 100 MB/s (720) |
| I/O | 10E SCSI 2 serial parallel HIL |
Overview
Project name:
These machines were the first PA-RISC workstations, called the Snakes, and were
based on the first PA-RISC 1.1 processors.
They were built into very solid cases, consisting of interlocking
exchangeable modules (sliders
).
The storage subsystem has its own slider
, connected to the main I/O board with a short external cable.
The 720 and 730 share the same backplane and I/O board and can be upgraded through
the exchange of the CPU board.
Later HP 9000/735 workstations share a similar system setup and
720/730 CPU and I/O boards can be swapped together for 735 boards, and vice versa
(as 735 I/O boards do not work with 720 CPU boards, both boards have to be exchanged).
Internals
CPU
- 720: PA-7000 50 MHz with 384 KB off-chip L1 cache
- 730: PA-7000 66 MHz with 384 KB off-chip L1 cache
- 750: PA-7000 66 MHz with 512 KB off-chip L1 cache
Chipset
- ASP chipset
- Viper memory and I/O controller
- NCR 53C700 8-bit single-ended SCSI-2
- Intel 82596DX 10 Mbit Ethernet controller
- Intel 82C501AD Ethernet transceiver
- Intel 82350 EISA bus adapter chipset (EISA to GSC)
- Other I/O (serial, parallel, i8042)
Buses
- PBus processor/memory bus at processor clock
- VSC main system bus at 0.5 of processor clock
- 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 (some shared with 735/755)
- 720: 8 slots
- 730: 8 slots and 16 MB onboard
272 MB (8×32+16) maximum - 750: 12 slots
768 MB (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
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
- SCSI-2 50-pin single-ended
- Two Serial RS232C DB9 (up to 115200 baud)
- Parallel DB25
- 15-pin AUI 10 Mbit & 10Base2 BNC Ethernet
- Graphics depend on installed SGC framebuffer
- HP-HIL connector for input devices
- Jack for beep audio
References:
Manuals
- HP Apollo 9000 Model 720/730 owner’s guide (PDF, 1.8 MB, Hewlett Packard)
- HP Apollo 9000 Model 750 owner’s guide (PDF, 2.1 MB, Hewlett Packard)
Articles
- Midrange PA-RISC Workstations with Price/Performance Leadership (.pdf) pp. 6-11 Andrew J. DeBaets and Kathleen M. Wheeler (August 1992: Hewlett-Packard Journal)
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 |