The Hewlett-Packard Archive | Hacker News Reader

The Hewlett-Packard Archive

hparchive.com

57 pointsjoebig30 comments

The actual HP archive, held by Agilent, went up in flames during a California wildfire:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/loss-of-hewlettpackard-archive-a-w...

Yeah, too bad it had not been digitized sooner.

The HP 185A oscilloscope[1], 500 MHz bandwidth, was $2000 in their 1960 catalog[2]. That would be $22,000 in today's dollars. (The brochure doesn't say MHz but uses MC meaning megacycles.) It would be fun to compare the specs to a cheap hobbyist level scope today.

[1] https://hparchive.com/Brochures/HP-185A-Brochure.pdf

[2] https://hparchive.com/Catalogs/HP-Catalog-1960-Short-Revised...

I’m sure someone has done this, but it would be interesting to study the overall tech landscape and compare which technology has sort of retained its value, depreciated, or increased in value—and how long those phases take. Even as far back as things like cast-iron printing presses and such. I mean also value in terms of usage not necessarily monetary.

The cycles we go through where a new tech supplants an old one, people thinking it’s the way of the future, and the old processes maybe forgotten for a while. Some might come back, others completely obsolescent. Still others the old tech might be superior to new—but more expensive (like old hard-wood window panes) and not sustainable.

Historically, technology has been deflationary.

I remember finding HeNe laser interferometers in an old HP catalogue from the '70s and being surprised that buying the equivalent system today from KeySight actually costs much more, even adjusted for inflation.

Interesting—I guess build quality and certain technologies that don’t change much makes supply-and-demand takes over.

I think I have this scope or a very similar one. I got it for free from someone else. (currently in storage.) It's a great hobbyist scope although mine doesn't have a DFT function which can be annoying. I've been borrowing a friend's modern digital scope when I've needed one. I think he only paid a few hundred for it. It's a little faster and has some more modern functions.

EDIT: Oops nope. Looked at the model number rather than the brochure. That's definitely an older analog scope while mine is digital.

I thought it would be an HP computer driver archive, as HP are notorious for taking down the driver downloads for older models. Does anyone know of such a driver archive?

The Sony Vaio line of computers had a similar problem, and community members launched the Vaio Library (https://vaiolibrary.com/index.php/Welcome_to_the_VAIO_Librar... / https://archive.vaiolibrary.com/)

If the website didn't use some annoying click tracking redirection or javascript, try the old standby: https://archive.org

I worked for almost 10 years at HP/HPE in the 2010s on embedded systems. I don't remember if it was a memo from Dave or Bill, but it was about never sacrificing quality for a deadline. Needless to say, we loved to dig up that old memo whenever PMs pushed too hard to get things released too early.

My father did a stint at HP long ago, before my time.

The thing that I wish he had snagged more of (which HP actively encouraged engineers to do) was the HP branded prototyping boards that fit DIP package ICs nicely and had power/ground rails with detached shared signal busses.

I rescued an HP-200A audio oscillator from the basement of a relative who’d passed away, thinking it looked interesting. Anyone know if it has any value? I’m guessing it’s nothing too special with a serial number of 30211.

200A sounds interesting, as that was their very first model number. Your relative didn't have anything to do with Disney, did they?

Not that I know of. Why do you ask?

Disney was Hewlett and Packard's first customer in 1939, or was at least among the very first. The 200A oscillators were used to calibrate theater sound hardware for presentations of 'Fantasia' (although https://www.hewlettpackardhistory.com/item/a-deal-with-disne... says the Disney versions were designated 200B.)

Does it look like the one in the photo on that site? Sounds like a very cool artifact. You can't always tell much from the serial number -- for example, notice that they started their model numbers with '200,' just to make the company look bigger and more reputable.

Interesting HP/Disney history! My unit looks similar-ish. Photo of the front:

https://imgur.com/a/jRw5pXK

It does look a little newer than the oldest examples I've seen photos of, but it's hard to say what the range of possible production dates would have been. You might be able to find a date code on an electrolytic capacitor or some other internal component.

There are a few HP 200As listed on eBay in the $100-$300 range. Not sure if they're actually selling for that, though.

FYI they say "Computers and calculators are not the focus of this archive website."

While the HP computers and calculators were well documented and their design process was also frequently described in HP Journal or other HP publications, the most valuable HP publications were about their measurement instruments.

Many of the ancient service manuals for HP measurement instruments were much better for learning electronics engineering than most university manuals.

I understand, but that’s a shame.

Way back, talking 1980 or so, my father got a newsletter cum magazine of sort from HP. Marketing material to be sure, but not just raw marketing. Some corporate organ that could easily been called something like “HP Today”.

But inside was, at the time, a science fiction story about handheld computers in the future. It was a fascinating bit of “snapshot in time” that I would enjoy seeing again.

In the off-topic calculator department: hpcalc.org :)

I have an HP 48 (series of graphing calculators) overhead projector display (InVision 48) that may need refurbishment to work, but I just found the manual at hpcalc.org.[0]

0. https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1290

Historically it's interesting, but come on, give us the IRIX source code, we know you have it somewhere.

IBM - AIX

DEC - Ultrix/Digital Unix

Apple - A/UX, macOS

HP - HP-UX

SGI - IRIX

Sun - SunOS, Solaris

Given acquisitions, the current IP ownership is more like:

IBM - AIX

HPE - ULTRIX, Tru64/OSF1/DIGITAL UNIX, HP-UX, IRIX

Apple - A/UX, macOS

Oracle - SunOS, Solaris

If HP and Sun had merged, I wonder if HP-UX would become HP-SUX.

It’s in the Jargon file. Your comment made me remember this bit:

Hackers at HP/Apollo (the former Apollo Computers which was swallowed by HP in 1989) have been heard to complain that Mr. Packard should have pushed to have his name first, if for no other reason than the greater eloquence of the resulting acronym.

https://zvon.org/comp/r/ref-Jargon_file.html#Terms~HP-SUX

In the 00's, the CS program at my undergrad university had computer clusters with all of the above +Linux +MINIX -Apple -DEC. It was de rigueur then to write portable C/C++ code and (non-GNU) Makefiles.

Also, lest not forget the contentious one: SCO - SCO -> Sun -> Oracle

It's not complete but there's this:

https://github.com/calmsacibis995/irix-6517-src

What's missing?

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