What is an HP98616?

[Tony Duell]

> 
> At 07:25 PM 7/24/05 +0100, you wrote:
> >> 
> >>   That sounds like the installation disks for HP BASIC 5.1. Nice Find! It
> >> took me years of searching to get a set. It should run on just about any HP
> >> 9000 series 200 or 300 machine. (HP 9816, 9826, 9836, 9000/220, 9000/310,
> >> 9000/320, etc etc etc).
> >
> >So I should be able to boot my 9836 from these? Excellent!. I assume I 
> >should use an externaal 9122 drive connected to the 9836's built-in HPIB 
> >port 
> 
>    I'm not sure if you'll be able to boot from an external drive or not. I
> don't mean to be a pessimist but I think you can only boot from a built-in
> drive. I just looked at the BASIC 5.1 Installation Manual and it doesn't
> say but when I look at the list of BIN driver files I see HP-IB, DISK,
> HP9885, CS80 and others. It says HP-IB is required in order to use the
> HP-IB, DISK provides support for "non CS80 disk drives such as the HP 82901
> and the HP 9121", HP9885 provides support for the HP 9885 drive, CS-80
> provides support for the CS-80 type disk AND SS-80 type disk. CS-80 also
> requires installation of the HPIB BIN file.  Since they provide these BIN

Yes, but most, iof not all, HP9000 series 200 and 300 machines had 3.5" 
drives on the HPIB bus -- not direcrly built-in. So if this runs on series
200 and 300 machines (and the disk labels imply) then at least on some
machines it must boot from an HPIB drive. 

Of course the 9836 boot ROM may only allow booting from the internal 
5.25" drives, which would be a pity. I thought, though, that at least 
some of the boot ROMs allowed booting from just about anything.

I've read te Pascal hacking manual on bitsavers which has a chapter on 
the boot process. It's not that explicit, but it certainly implies you 
can boot from things other than the internal drives.

>     PS the command to save a built OS file is STORE SYSTEM filename and not
> SAVE SYSTEM.

Doubtless I'll have forgotten that by the time I get my 9836 up and 
running :-)

-tony