PA-RISC information - since 1999

RDI PrecisionBook

Quick Facts
Introduced 1998
Period Maturity (III)
Series Portable
CPU PA-7300LC 32-bit
132-180 MHz
Cache 128 KB L1
(+1 MB L2)
RAM 512 MB
Design LASI
Drives 2 SCSI (2.5″!)
Expansion 2 Cardbus
I/O Ethernet
VGA
SCSI
floppy
2 PS/2
docking
I/O breakout
audio
RDI PrecisionBook
© RDI 1999

RDI PrecisionBooks are portable PA-RISC workstations, released by RDI in 1998, shortly before the takeover by Tadpole. They were based on HP 9000 C132L workstations in a portable case and marketed as first HP-UX laptops.

PrecisionBooks were used for engineering, software development, network management, financial modeling, military command operations, and intelligence gathering.

As RDI PrecisionBooks were technically based on C132L/C160Ls, they supported the same PA-RISC operating systems and applications. A major addition by RDI to the system logic was an integrated Cardbus controller for which Tadpole supplied drivers for HP-UX.

PrecisionBook ad © RDI 1998

RDI PrecisionBooks apparently did not enjoy large commercial success but Tadpole reused the laptop design for other RISC laptops of the 1990s, for example the UltraSPARC-based Tadpole UltraBook that was slightly more successful.

In addition to the PrecisionBook, only two other portable PA-RISC computers were produced – the military-focused SAIC Galaxy 1100, based on HP 9000 712, and the Japanese Hitachi 3050RX 100C laptop, based on Hitachi custom design.

There were a few other RISC Laptops in the 1990s, with a wide variety of processor architectures such as SPARC, PowerPC and even Alpha.

Architecture

Processors

The external L2 cache was optional but was supplied with most systems
System CPU Speed L1 Cache L2 Cache
PrecisionBook 132 PA-7300LC 132 MHz 64/64 KB on-chip 1 MB off-chip optional
PrecisionBook 160 PA-7300LC 160 MHz 64/64 KB on-chip 1 MB off-chip optional
PrecisionBook 180 PA-7300LC 180 MHz 64/64 KB on-chip 1 MB off-chip optional

Chipset

HP Visualize C130L/C160L System Architecture: 

 _________ Mainbus______
|PA-7300LC|_..___|Memory|
|_________| ||   |______|
  __|__     ||
 |Cache|    ||
 |_____|    ||     _ _ LASI ASIC _ _
 _______    ||            ______
|Phantom|___||    |  ..__|i82596|___|_[Ethernet Console]
|_______|            ||  |______|
    |_______..    |  ||   ______    |
 ___        ||       ||__|53C710|_____[8-bit SCSI-2]
|PDC|_______||    |  ||  |______|   |
|___|       ||_______||   ____
 ____       ||    |  ||__|PS/2|_____|_[Keyboard/Mouse]
|Dino|______||__     ||  |____|
|____|     GSC  | |  ||   ______    |
   |            |    ||__|16550A|_____[Serial]
   |________..  | |  ||  |______|   |
 ________   ||  |    ||   ______  
|slot-1  |  ||  | |  ||__|37C65C|___|_[Floppy]
|________|  ||  |    ||  |______|
 __||___    ||  | |  ||   ______    |
|Cardbus|___||  |    ||__|16C522|_____[Parallel]
|_______|  PCI  | |  ||  |______|   |
 __||____       |    ||   _______
|slot-2  |      | |  ||__|Harmony|__|_[Audio]
|________|      |    ||  |_______|
                | |  ||   ___       |
                |    ||__|RTC|
                | | GSC  |___|      |
                |  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
                |    ___________
                |___|VisualizeEG|_____[LCD/VGA]
                    |___________|

Display

Input

Energy

System buses

Expansion

Memory

I/O slots

Storage

I/O ports

Operating systems

Not all devices or expansion options and modules are supported in Linux and the BSDs. OpenBSD fully supports the Cardbus controller and a range of different Cardbus and PCMCIA devices (Fast-Ethernet, WLAN etc.).

Benchmarks

Based on old SPEC95 archives
System CPU SPEC95
int		 SPEC95
fp
PrecisionBook 132 PA-7300LC 132MHz 6.49 6.54
PrecisionBook 160 PA-7300LC 160MHz 7.78 7.39
PrecisionBook 180 PA-7300LC 180MHz 9.22 9.43

Comparison to SPEC benchmark data from other contemporary Unix workstations:

Based on old SPEC95 archives
System CPU SPEC95
int		 SPEC95
fp
Tadpole UltraBookIIi Sun UltraSPARC IIi 400MHz 17.9 20.6
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
DEC Alphastation 255 DEC Alpha 21064A 233MHz 4.27 5.09
IBM RS/6000 Notebook 860 PowerPC 603e 166MHz 3.94 2.71

Documentation

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