How to lose most of an an entire collection in one shot

[Tony Duell]

> > And then there's the attributesm which are set on a character line basis. 
> > Basically, every character is either normal or enhanced (decided by bit 7 
> > of the chracter code). You can only have one type of enhancement in a 
> > given line. So you could have normal and underlined characters in the 
> > same line, but you can't have normal, inverse, and underlined characters 
> > all in the same line.
> >   
> 
> Okay, I'll grant you that was a bit weird.  Honestly, though, it was 
> never an issue for me, or the original owner.

It just seems very strang for HP to do something like this. THe video 
system in the HP9000s is a lot more conventional (6845-based), I think 
the HP150 one is not too strange. And I don't think it came directly from 
any of the terminals (I've not seen one which doesn't allow you to have 
several differenet nehancemnets on one line).

It's not a big deal, the machine works fine, and most of the time all you 
need are stnadard characters.

> I don't know how 'official' it was, but I had PORTSET.COM which directly 

That's not on the standard CP/M boot disk, and I can find no reference to 
it in any of the manuals on hpmuseum.net. 

> set up the serial port from the CP/M side.  Er, it RAN on the CP/M side, 
> and set up the ports.

I suspect it did downlaod something to the terminal processor. But 
obviously I can't be sure

> 
> 
> > I'd much rather have an HP9000/200....
> 
> An attorney's office near me had the HP-125.  When they upgraded, I got 
> their old system for a song.  Nobody I knew was getting rid of an 
> HP9000/200.  This was before eBay, and I really didn't have a good way 
> to find specific equipment.  One takes what's available.  Still and all, 
> I very much enjoyed using it, and it was the first machine I had that 
> would be a reasonable terminal, HPIB controller, AND general purpose 
> computer.  Also, they were SLEEK.  So, scoff if you want, but I liked it 

I'm not socoffing, I am just pointing out things I don't like about the 
design based on sitting down with the schematics and figuring out just 
how it works,

I like the machine (HP120) enough to buy one of E-bay (after I'd read some 
technical info on it, and had an idea as to what I was getting into). 
Like most HP stuff of that period, it's _solid_. Both mechancially and 
electronically. 

> just fine.  It probably would have been more difficult than average to 
> repair hardware problems on it, but in about 15 years, I never had one.

I don't see why. Getting some of the chips might be hard now, but apart 
from that it's not too bad. The design is understnadable, it can be 
debugged in the normal way.

FWIW, Mine fired up with no problems. OK, I had to make a keyboard for it 
(not a normal problem if you got one new...), I had to repair the cooling 
fan, and I had to change one capacitor on the PSU board -- it seemed OK, 
but the top was bluging. Since it was one of the mains smoothing 
capacitors, and since if it had burst it would have gone straight towards 
the CRT neck, I replaced it.

-tony