HP 9000 840

First PA-RISC servers

HP released the first commercial PA-RISC product in 1986 with the HP 9000 840 Indigo server. It was based on a six-board TTL implementation of the 32-bit PA-RISC 1.0 TS-1 processor at 8 MHz. HP 9000 840 were marketed and used as servers in those days. Only few 840s remain in existence after the early PA-RISC days 40 years ago.

HP 9000 840 use two main buses: Central Bus (CTB, a.k.a. MidBus) and Channel I/O (CIO). CTB is a 32-bit 8 MHz 20 MB/s bus to connect processor to the main memory and CIO, the 16-bit I/O bus. There are seven CIO card slots are available on CIO, with a data rate of 5 MB/s and clock speed of 4 MHz. Supported CIO devices include HP-IB, Hewlett-Packard Interface-Bus, used for instrumentation, measurement and networking adapters.

Up to 112 MB of RAM is supported: 7×16 MB with 2-16 MB HP memory modules. Optional graphics use one I/O and one memory slot, reducing the maximum RAM to 96 MB. Included by default was a Floating Point Coprocessor (FPC) board with HP 9000 840 computers. Storage and media devices attached via HP-IB; SCSI was only available later with newer boot ROMs. HP 9000 840 could be upgraded via CPU board swaps to later 825, 835 or 845 servers, retaining the case, memory and I/O boards.

Originally priced at $113,500 in 1986, HP 9000 840 with maxed out options went for up to $240,500. HP 9000 840 achieved about 4.5 MIPS and originally shipped in 1986 with HP-UX 1.0, heavily BSD-based Unix, supported until HP-UX 10.10 in 1995.

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Operating systems

HP 9000 800 servers, especially the early versions from the 1980s, only really support HP-UX Unix, developed by HP, due to their custom and proprietary hardware.

HP-UX support for HP 9000 840 servers
HP-UX	Year	Comment
HP-UX 10.10	1995	UNIX95, CDE, ServiceGuard
HP-UX 10.01	1995	System V, DCE, Streams, better I/O and memory unsupported: 635, 645, 808, 815 unsupported: 825CHX, 825SRX, 834CH, 835SRX
HP-UX 9.0	1992	PA-7100 and PA-7100LC support, LVM, VUE 9.02, 9.04 and 9.06 added hardware support 9.08 was B1 security release
HP-UX 8.0	1991	8.02 added Nova support 8.04 and 8.08 were security versions 8.06 added SMP code
HP-UX 7.0	1989	PA-RISC only in 7.03, rest M68k
HP-UX 2.0	1987	BSD, supports graphics
HP-UX 1.0	1986	First, prerelease

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Benchmarks

Assorted MIPS performance figures for early HP 9000 800 servers.

Based on HP and MIPS archives
System	CPU	MIPS
HP 9000 840	TS-1 PA-RISC 8 MHz	4.5

Comparison to SPEC benchmark data of other RISC and Unix computers:

Based on old SPEC92, Dhrystone and MIPS archives
System	CPU	SPEC92 int	SPEC89	MIPS
HP Apollo DN10000	Apollo PRISM 18 MHz		19	22
DECstation 3100	MIPS R2000 16MHz	8.4	11.8	15.1
HP 9000 425e	Motorola M68040 25MHz	12.2	10.3	18
Intel	i386 33MHz		4.3	8
IBM PC 6150	IBM ROMP 6MHz			2.1
HP 9000 320	Motorola M68020 15MHz			2
HP 9000 500	FOCUS 18 MHz			0.98
DEC VAX 11/780	KA780 3.4MHz	1	1	0.9
IBM PC AT	Intel 80286 6MHz			0.8

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Documentation

Information on early PA-RISC computers is fragmented and inconsistent, even in official sales and technical documentation. This article was pieced together from news and press releases plus documentation available at the HP Computer Museum.

INFORMATION ON HP9000 SERVERS AND WORKSTATIONS Hewlett Packard Company (1999. Accessed January 2007) and The HP 3000/HP 9000 model spreadsheet, Allegro Consultants (2004. Accessed January 2007)
Wayne E. Holt (ed.), Beyond RISC! An Essential Guide to Hewlett-Packard Precision Architecture, p. 95-102. (January 1988: Software Research Northwest Inc.) and Hardware Design of the First HP Precision Architecture Computers (PDF) David A. Fotland et al (March 1987: Hewlett-Packard Journal) hp museum
Interview with David Fotland, September/October 2008
HP-UX CE Handbook for Series 800 HP Precision Architecture-RISC Computer Systems Hewlett-Packard Company (May 1993, 5961-8364) bitsavers
HP 3000/930 and HP 9000/840 Computers CE Handbook Hewlett-Packard Company (November 1986, 09740-90023) bitsavers

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