PA-RISC information - since 1999

HP 9000/C100 and C110

Quick Facts
Introduced 1995
Period Maturity (III)
Series Visualize
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
I/O Ethernet
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. The C-Class were marketed as technical workstations for graphical use cases – CAD, CAE and visualization, and were pretty fast Unix desktop computers for their time.

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

HP billed these entry C-Classes as having 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 – 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.

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

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

System buses

Memory

Expansion slots

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:

External ports

Operating systems

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

Comparison to SPEC benchmark data from other contemporary Unix workstations:

Based on old SPEC95 archives
Model CPU SPEC95 int SPEC95 fp
Siemens SCENIC 1000 Intel Pentium II 333MHz 13.0 9.43
SGI O2 MIPS R10000 196MHz 10.1 8.77
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 6.19 3.20
Digital 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

Pictures

Dimensions

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

References

Manuals

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