HP 9000 C100 and C110 Workstations

Quick Facts
Introduced 1995
Period Maturity (III)
Series Visualize
CPU PA-7200 32-bit
100-120 MHz
Cache 256 KB L1
RAM 1 GB
Design U2
Drives 3 SCSI
1 FD
Expansion 1 GSC
3 EISA/GSC
I/O Ethernet
2 SCSI
2 serial
2 PS/2
HIL
audio

HP 9000 C100 and C110 are Unix graphics workstations based on PA-RISC PA-7200 processors, introduced in 1995. HP marketed C-Class as technical workstations for graphical use cases – CAD, CAE and visualization. They were pretty fast Unix desktop computers for their time.

HP C110 with CRT
C110, Thomas Schanz CC BY-SA 4.0

C100 and C110 were entry-level C-Class workstations with no-compromise, full computing power to be used in technical and design applications with 2D and 3D graphics. HP 9000 C-Class have a similar case to the older HP 9000 735 workstations with interlocking I/O modules and CPU board, but are based on faster PA-7200 and U2.

There were other C-Class workstations with different designs: 32-bit C132L and C160L, 64-bit C160 and C180 and powerful C200 et al. Board upgrades of C100 and C110 were possible to C160 and C180.

System

Processors

System CPU Speed L1 cache
HP 9000 C100 PA-7200 PA-RISC 32-bit 100 MHz 256/256 KB off-chip, 2 KB on-chip assist
HP 9000 C110 PA-7200 PA-RISC 32-bit 120 MHz 256/256 KB off-chip, 2 KB on-chip assist

Chipset

HP 9000 C100 and C110 workstations use the HP U2 chipset for PA-RISC computers. HP computers with Runway bus often used U2 and UTurn I/O adapters (IOA) and MMC/SMC as memory controllers that attach subsystems to the main Runway bus. HP UTurn and U2 attach the GSC main system bus with devices and I/O via Runway bus to the CPUs.

The rest of the system design and I/O devices is made up of proven components based on prior HP 32-bit PA-RISC designs, re-using HP LASI as I/O chipset. 

 ______ 
|ICache|
|______|
 __|____  Runway  ______
|PA-7200|___..___|Memory|
|_______|   ||   |______|
 __|___     ||
|DCache|    ||     _ _ LASI ASIC _ _
|______|    ||            ______
 ________   ||    |  ..__|i82596|___|_[10Mb Ethernet]
|U2/Uturn|__||       ||  |______|
|________|        |  ||   ______    |
    | |________..    ||__|53C710|_____[8-bit SCSI-2]
    |_______.. || |  ||  |______|   |
            || ||____||   ____
 ________   || || |  ||__|PS/2|_____|_[Keyboard/Mouse]
|GSC-slot|__|| ||    ||  |____|
|________|  || || |  ||   ______    |
 ________   || ||    ||__|16550A|_____[1st Serial]
|GSC-slot|__|| || |  ||  |______|   |
|________| GSC ||    ||   ______
 ________      || |  ||__|37C65C|___|_[Floppy]
|WAX/EISA|_____||    ||  |______|
|________|     || |  ||   ______    |
    ||         ||    ||__|16C522|_____[Parallel]
 ___||____     || |  ||  |______|   |
|EISA-slot|    ||    ||   _______
|_________|    || |  ||__|Harmony|__|_[Audio]
 ___||____     ||    ||  |_______|
|EISA-slot|    || |  ||   ___       |
|_________|    ||    ||__|RTC|
 ___||____     || | GSC  |___|      |
|EISA-slot|    ||  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
|_________|    ||   ______
               ||__|53C720|___________[16-bit SCSI-2]
               ||  |______|
 ________      ||
|GSC-slot|_____||  _ _ WAX ASIC_ _ _
|________|     || |                 |
 ________      ||         ______
|GSC-slot|_____|| |  ..__|16550A|___|_[2nd Serial]
|________|     ||____||  |______|
              GSC |  ||   ___       |
                     ||__|HIL|________[Input]
                  | GSC  |___|      |
                   _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

HP 9000 C100/C110 System Architecture

System buses

Expansion

Memory

Expansion cards

Storage

Ports

Operating systems

Pictures

HP Visualize C110 HP Visualize C110 HP Visualize C110 HP Visualize C110
HP Visualize C110 HP Visualize C110 HP Visualize C110
HP Visualize C110, Thomas Schanz 2014, CC BY-SA 4.0

Dimensions

Height Width Depth Weight
138mm 539mm 447mm 21kg

Performance

HP 9000 C100 and C110 were fast RISC workstations of the mid-1990s with good performance but slightly lower clock than the RISC and Unix competition of the time like Sun Ultra 2, DEC Alphastations or SGI Indy. Compared to other platforms of the 1990s, PA-RISC was fast with PA-7200 processors being high-performance mid-1990s RISC processors.

PA-RISC SPEC scores of HP 9000 computers
System CPU SPEC95
int		 SPEC95
fp
HP 9000 C100 PA-7200 100 MHz 4.98 6.59
HP 9000 C110 PA-7200 120 MHz 6.00 8.14
Based on old SPEC95 archives
System CPU SPEC95
int		 SPEC95
fp
HP Visualize C240 PA-8200 236 MHz 17.1 25.4
Siemens SCENIC 1000 Intel Pentium II 333MHz 13.0 9.43
SGI O2 MIPS R10000 196MHz 10.1 8.77
HP Visualize C160L PA-7300LC 160 MHz 7.75 7.56
DEC Alphastation 500 DEC Alpha 21164 266MHz 7.20 11.10
Intel Alder Intel Pentium Pro 166MHz 7.11 6.21
Sun Ultra 2 1170 Sun UltraSPARC 167MHz 6.34 9.33
Sun Ultra 1 Sun UltraSPARC 143MHz 5.41 7.90
DEC Alphastation 250 DEC Alpha 21064A 266MHz 4.18 6.27
SGI Indy MIPS R5000 150MHz 3.97 4.20
HP 9000 712/100 PA-7100LC 100 MHz 3.76 4.06
IBM RS/6000 43P PowerPC 604 100 MHz 3.59 3.20

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.

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