HP 9000/C100 and C110

Quick Facts
Introduced	1995
Period	Maturity (III)
CPU	PA-7200 100-120 MHz
Cache	256 KB L1
RAM	1 GB
Design	U2
Drives	3 SCSI 1 FD
Expansion	1 GSC 3 EISA/GSC
Bandwidth	CPU 800 MB/s (C100) CPU 960 MB/s (C110) Mem 400 MB/s (C100) Mem 480 MB/s (C110) I/O ?
I/O	10E 2 SCSI 2 serial 2 PS/2 HIL audio

The HP 9000 C100 and C110 are PA-RISC graphics workstations based on the PA-7200 processor and were introduced in 1995. They have a similar case to that of the old HP 9000 735 — built of interlocking modules of the I/O and MPU board.

The 32-bit C100 and C110 were board-upgradable to the 64-bit C160 and C180 for around $7,000 in 1996.

Model	Number	Introduced	Price
C100	9000/777	1995	$19,715
C110	9000/777	1995	$25,715

System architecture

Processors

Model	CPU	Speed	L1 Cache
C100	PA-7200	100 MHz	256/256 KB off-chip, 2 KB on-chip assist
C110	PA-7200	120 MHz	256/256 KB off-chip, 2 KB on-chip assist

Chipset

U2 I/O adapter Runway to GSC bridge
MMC/SMC memory controllers
LASI I/O chipset
NCR 53C710 8-bit single-ended SCSI-2
NCR 53C720 16-bit Fast-Wide high-voltage differential (HVD) SCSI-2
Intel 82596CA 10 Mbit Ethernet controller
Harmony CD/DAT quality 16-bit stereo audio
Wax EISA bridge
GSC graphics
Other I/O (serial, parallel, HP-HIL, Floppy)

» View a system-level ASCII-illustration of the system architecture.

System buses

Runway CPU/memory bus (100 MHz 800 MB/s peak data rate on C100, 120 MHz, 960 MB/s on C110)
GSC general system-level I/O bus
EISA additional expansion I/O bus
SCSI-2 single-ended bus
SCSI-2 Fast-Wide high-voltage differential main storage I/O bus

Memory

72-pin ECC SIMMs, 60ns or faster
Bus width: 128 data bits with 16 check bits
Up to 8-way interleaving
400 MB/s (C100), 480 MB/s (C110) peak bandwidth
Eight slots for 16-128 MB modules
32 MB to 1 GB supported

Expansion slots

One slot for a GSC (EISA formfactor) card
Three slots for GSC (EISA formfactor) or EISA cards
I/O slot layout (from top to bottom):
1. EISA or GSC
2. EISA or GSC
3. EISA or GSC (for secondary graphics)
4. GSC (for primary graphics)

Storage

The disk slider can accomodate up to three SCSI drives and one floppy drive simultaneously, the internal cabling (usually) includes one Wide-SCSI cable with three 68-pin connectors and a HVD-terminator at the end, one Narrow-SCSI with one 50-pin connector and one cable for the floppy.

The Narrow-SCSI cable is normally used for the external-accessible half-height 5.25″ CD/DAT drive, although it is of course also possible to connect a 50-pin SE hard drive. The cable can also be easily replaced with a variant with more connectors to use up to three 50-pin SE hard drives. The PDC can boot off these SE drives.

The Wide-SCSI cable is normally used for the internal 3.5″ 68-pin Fast-Wide high-voltage differential system drives. Up to three hard drives can be installed in the cage, which leaves no room for an external-accessible CD/DAT drive though. The Fast-Wide drives are also bootable from the PDC.

A standard configuration could look like this:

Two 3.5″ 68-pin Fast-Wide differential (HVD) SCSI hard drives,
One 3.5″ Floppy drive and
One external-accessible half-height 5.25″ SCSI drive (CD/DAT).

External ports

SCSI-2 50-pin single-ended
SCSI-3 68-pin Fast-Wide differential (HVD)
Two serial RS232C DB9 (up 460.8Kb/s)
Parallel DB25
Ethernet RJ45
Ethernet AUI 15-pin
Graphics port depend on installed video adapter
Two PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse
HP-HIL for input device loop
Four phone jacks (microphone, headphones, line-in and ?)

Operating systems

HP-UX 10.20, 11.00 and 11i v1
Linux
OpenBSD (32-bit)
NetBSD (32-bit)
Research: HPBSD

Benchmarks

Model	SPEC95, int	SPEC95, fp	SPECrate95, int	SPECrate95, fp
C100	4.98	6.59	44.8	59.4
C110	6.00	8.14	54.0	73.3

Dimensions

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

References

Manuals

C100/110 Owners Guide (PDF, 1.6 MB)
Service Handbook C Class (PDF, 1.5 MB)

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