What's needed for a minimal HP-1000 series E/(F?) system?

[J. David Bryan]

On Wednesday, March 11, 2009 at 0:41, Josh Dersch wrote:

> The 1000F (2117F) has the following installed:
> 
> 10           - F.E.M.

What ROMs are installed in the FEM sockets (part numbers)?


> The 1000E (2113E) is empty aside from the power-supply & mainboard and a
> single F.E.M. card in slot 10.

Without a memory controller and memory card, this unit will not work.


> The F.E.M. is cabled to the main board via a ribbon cable (this ribbon
> cable is not present on the 1000F). 

The FEM needs that cable in order to work.  So the FEM in the F will be non-
functional.


> Is the above enough to get a minimal system running (i.e. to allow 
> toggling in programs via the front panel and testing the system?)

The F-series probably will.  The only question is whether the self-test 
microcode that is executed at power-up will pass without the FPP box.  As I 
recall, it will, but all of the floating-point and some of the double-
integer instructions will not work.


> Is there anything I need to know about how the cards need to be
> configured/cabled together? 

There should be a ribbon cable to the front connector on the DCPC card.  
Only the left-side connectors of the memory controller and memory cards 
should be interconnected.  The front connector of the FEM card must be 
connected to the main board to work (you could move the cable from the E-
series).

For interrupts to work properly, the I/O cards must be contiguous starting 
from slot 10.


> My understanding is that the F-series has some kind of floating-point
> support, but it's also my understanding that such support was provided
> via an external expansion, which I do not have. 

The 2117 used an external rack-mount box about 1/3 of the height of the CPU 
chassis.  The 2111 housed the FPP cards within the CPU chassis.


> Since I don't have this expansion, will the 1000F work at all, or
> should I move the cards I have to the E?

It should work, modulo the malfunctioning instructions.  The E-series, with 
memory and a memory controller, will have functioning firmware-based 
floating point instructions.  So I'd recommend concentrating on a 
functional E rather than a damaged F.

                                      -- Dave