OOn 02.05.01, 10:34:28, jarkko@mail.er-grp.com wrote:
> 
> I always love it when people ask how many gigabytes my 7933 holds.

I haven't been into HP workstations until I got one on ebay very
recently and I'm already hooked. I first got a series 700 but
discovered there was no NetBSD for it and I could not get HP-UX
to boot diskless, So ...

... now I have an old 400t and a 425t (and maybe get another 400s,
with that beatifully weird tower case), and they all booted diskless
without any problem. And I have a serial console, don't need to
fiddle with interrupts, BIOS setups and all that crap.

It's even usable as an X-Terminal with its Catseye graphics, and a
friend is going to use his as a router as soon as he figures out how to
install a second network adapter.

> But seriously, I've never had any hardware as stable and rock solid as
> the older HP machines. Complement the good hardware with a good OS

After fiddling for days with the setup (PCI cards always tend to all use
the _same_ interrupt) I now have very stable PCs, too. Running NetBSD,
of course, and being bootserver to the HPs.

> like NetBSD and you get my idea of computing. I love it when I can
> get new software like postgresql just by doing "make" and this on 
> hardware that's been "obsolete" since 199x.

Yes, one of the really neat side effects of having a modern operating
system that's basically the same on very different hardware. And getting
software in source code.

What I'd like to see is, of course, MI-SCSI (so I could use the machine
as a scanner server) and an X11R6 server, but I guess I should not
complain,
but rather start coding. If only I knew where to start.

> 
> I'd recommend the experience to most of the current crop of freshmeat etc. 
> coders. 

Most wouldn't even know there's anything other than Linux/x86, and a lot
of
the code shows it once you try to compile it on a real Unix :)

> 
> Yep, all I need is the FOCUS instruction set, gcc backend, boot block details,
> and some other stuff. After that a small amount of code to get SMP on those
> three processors:) Plenty of testing help too, I know of 4-9 users at the

Sounds like a few weeks' work. I didn't even know about hp500 machines.

> moment. That would kick pc532 from the most-obscure-hw seat.
> 
> -- 
> jht
> 
> 

-- 
Bernd Sieker

Of course it runs NetBSD