HP 9000 743i and 744 VME Workstations

Quick Facts
Introduced 1994 and 1997
Period Maturity (III)
Series 740 VME
CPU PA-7100LC 32-bit
PA-7300LC 32-bit
64-165 MHz
Caches 128-256 KB L1
0-512 KB L2
RAM 256 MB (743i)
1 GB (744)
Design LASI
Drives none
Expansion (2 GSC-M)/
(2 PMC PCI)
I/O micro Ethernet
SCSI
micro serial
micro parallel
micro VGA
2 PS/2
micro audio

HP 9000 743i and 744 workstations are VME single-board computers with 32-bit PA-RISC processors for use in VME computers, released between 1994 and 1997. They are based on HP 9000 715 and HP Visualize B132L/B160L workstations and integrated the system processing unit with memory and I/O controllers onto a VME board.

743 © 1997 Hewlett Packard

HP 9000 743i were used with HP-UX Unix in 748i VME workstations, HP 9000 744 boards in HP 9000 745 and 748 workstations but also supported HP-RT real-time in special models.

HP 9000 743i and 744 have on-board expansion options for very specialized and rare GSC-mezzanine (GSC-M) and PCI-mezzanine (PMC) cards, often used for graphics, SCSI or ATM networking. As VME computers, when installed into a VME cage (frame) with power and VME bus connections, HP 9000 743i and 744 can talk to and control other VME cards on the same VME bus, used for instrumentation and I/O.

HP 9000 748
HP VME advertisement
748 and VME © 1997 Hewlett Packard

HP 9000 74x VME were designed hospital intensive-care systems and data and control functions for manufacturing, automotive, telecommunications, aerospace, medical and laboratory applications but had many military uses.

HP 743rt and 744rt versions were sold with HP-RT realtime operating system, the sub-100µs response times critical for a hospital system tied to a heart monitor, or a missile tracking system.

HP V743rt boards in turn were real-time VXI embedded controllers, modified VME boards for VME eXtension for Instrumentation-Bus, which were sold together with Agilent in the HP instrumentation business line. (see below: V743 and Agilent VXI)

All HP 9000 74x VME products were discontinued in 2002 as customers ha[d] migrated to new solutions and platforms more rapidly than anticipated by HP. Support for HP VME and HP-RT was ended by HP between 2003 and 2007.

US Navy TAC

HP 9000 743i and 744 VME computers were used by the US Navy through the TAC-4 program (Tactical Advanced Computer), in which HP was contracted to supply various PA-RISC workstation and server series to the Navy. 743i and 744 were used for tactical display and control applications like the AN/UYQ-70 workstation aboard surface and submarine vessels and surveillance aircraft. They used third-party VME devices, systems and graphics integration and FDDI networking.

V743 and Agilent VXI

V743 © 1997 Hewlett Packard

HP 743 VME single-board computers were also sold for advanced measurement in the VXIbus, VME eXtension for Instrumentation bus. For this, the HP VME boards were adapted and modified for VXI bus interfaces and instrumentation, in cooperation with Agilent.

HP Agilent V743/64 and V743/100 VXI embedded computers are apparently very close to original VME 743i, integrated for VXI as single-slot, C-size, message-based computers with direct VXI access. They ran HP-UX Unix as operating system and C-SCPI and Agilent VEE.

There were apparently also V743rt/64 and V743rt/100 High Performance Real-time VXI Embedded Controllers, marketed without Agilent branding. They had direct VXI backplane access, were a C-Size VXI single slot module with VXI slot 0 (system) controller, graphics, 16 or 32MB RAM, various onboard I/O and SICLrt. Mentioned in HP catalogues, it is unclear if they were ever really productized.

System

Processors

System CPU Speed Cache
HP 9000 743i/64 PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit 64 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip
HP 9000 743i/100 PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit 100 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip
HP 743rt PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit 64 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip
HP V743rt/64 PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit 64 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip
HP 9000 V743rt/100 PA-7100LC PA-RISC 32-bit 100 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip
HP 9000 744/132L PA-7300LC PA-RISC 32-bit 132 MHz 128 KB on-chip
HP 9000 744/165L PA-7300LC PA-RISC 32-bit 165 MHz 128 KB on-chip and 512 KB L2 off-chip
HP 9000 744rt/132L PA-7300LC PA-RISC 32-bit 132 MHz 128 KB on-chip
HP 9000 744rt/165L PA-7300LC PA-RISC 32-bit 165 MHz 128 KB on-chip and 512 KB L2 off-chip

Chipset

System buses

Expansion

Memory

Expansion cards

Some pins of the P2-VME connector are used to route GSC bus traffic to expansion options. VME cages need to be properly jumpered to support this to not interfere with these transfers. 743/744 boards must not be used in VXI cages since some of the VXI pins carry voltage which would result in damaged devices on the GSC bus.

Ports

Notes

  1. These micro-connectors need HP conversion cables to provide the normal-sized versions of their respective connectors

Operating systems

Performance

PA-RISC SPEC scores of HP 9000 computers
System SPEC95
int		 SPEC95
fp
HP 9000 743i/64 2.52 3.31
HP 9000 743i/100 3.76 4.03
HP 9000 744/132L 6.45 6.70
HP 9000 744/165L 7.90 7.64

Compared to other RISC and Unix platforms of the 1990s, PA-RISC was a fast architecture with PA-7100LC and PA-7300LC processors being solid mid-1990s low-cost RISC processors.

Based on old SPEC95 archives
System CPU SPEC95
int		 SPEC95
fp
Intel Alder Intel Pentium Pro 200MHz 8.09 6.75
Sun Ultra 2 1170 Sun UltraSPARC 167MHz 6.34 9.33
IBM RS/6000 43P PowerPC 604 100 MHz 3.59 3.20
DEC Alphastation 255 DEC Alpha 21064A 233MHz 4.27 5.09
SGI Indy MIPS R5000 150MHz 3.97 4.20
Sun SPARCstation 20 Sun SuperSPARC II 75MHz 3.11 3.10
DEC AlphaStation 200 DEC Alpha 21064 100MHz 1.48 2.79
Sun SPARCstation 10 Sun SuperSPARC 40MHz 1.13 1.38

Documentation

Most HP documentation is only available at archive.org and other archives, with most official sources, articles and journals having disappeared in the 2010s.

Product features

Manuals

Articles

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