Anyone still playing with HP 1000/2000 minis?

[Tim Riker]

On 10/11/2014 04:06 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote:
> On 2014-Oct-11, at 1:57 AM, Rik Bos wrote:
> 
>>>> Just noticed recently that the source from 1970 for the single-user HP BASIC
>>> has appeared on bitsavers (thanks Al), so working on getting that going now.
>>> Nice to have some period software for the machine.

Direct link?

>>> That was OCR'd from a listing that purchased from HP in 1971 so that I could
>>> hack on the BASIC  interpreter that was running on the 2114 at my high school.

Same source? Got a link?

>> Probably Educational Basic HP24160A, there was a special configuration of
>> the  HP 2114A/B combined with the HP 2748A paper tape reader and a HP 2760A
>> optical mark card reader and a HP 2752A Teleprinter delivered to schools and
>> Universities.
>> The whole combination without the Teleprinter was built in a 19"cabinet with
>> a small drawer at the top, it's purpose was to learn children and students
>> Basic.
>> The Educational basic differs from stand-alone HP 24000A Basic, it can read
>> a special kind of marked cards (HP 02760-9051) with basic commands on it.
> 
> Haven't seen any mention or support for the card reader in either the interpreter or the PBS (Prepare Basic System) device configuration .. seems to be the standard version.
> 
> I remember the special BASIC mark-sense cards from the 9830 + 9869A/7261A card reader at the high school I went to.

Penfield High, NY where I attended, had a 19" cabinet with an HP-2114B
(B?) and a ASR-33 console. There was also an HP-2761A Optical Mark
reader, and I'm not sure the printer.

At the time I used it, there were 4 "consoles" running and time slicing
was done on each line of basic. The card reader was one input, and the
printer was the output. The ASR-33 was the only interactive terminal the
previous year, but new this year were two crt serial terminals. They
were not the HP branded terminals.

There was a paper tape punch and a reader. The punch was disconnected
and sitting over on a shelf.

As I recall there was a dual 8" floppy drive inside the cabinet.

There was no login on the terminals. Files starting with an exclamation
point where invisible to directory listings.

I've not found a time-shared basic that matched this type of
configuration. Dick Stover (now deceased) was the systems operator for a
number of different schools in upstate New York that ran similar setups.

Is the HP24160A you mention a software system? or the bundling of
specific hardware? both? Is the BASIC multi-user?

There was a grading program in the system that, as I recall, was
triggered by a CALL -151 command in basic. Thus a teacher would include
the magic card that triggered the app, then include a card marked with
the correct answers, then as many cards to be graded as they liked. I
don't recall how this was ended. Might have been a special end card. The
printer would then print a grade report for each card. All other
processing on the other "consoles" would halt until the grading was
complete. Then the BASIC time slicing would resume where it left off.

I have some partial source listings from back then of the D&D program we
were working on. It used a number of "chained" programs to do: map
generation, map navigation, battle encounters, inventory management,
etc. We had functions to pack and unpack date into floats as I don't
recall the BASIC supporting direct integers.

I'd be very interested in any source that might be this version of
BASIC. I've looked at the Montana State University basic, but this does
not look like what I recall. Sources for some of this up on my site:

http://rikers.org/hp2100/

check out the "msu" directory.

I have:

HP-2116A (non-functional, yes, that's an A, not a B or a C)
HP-2100A (not powered up)
HP-2108A (functional)
HP-2112A (functional)

HP-7900 (broken chassis)
HP-7901 * 2 (never powered up)

HP-2748B Paper Tape reader
HP-2761A Optical Mark Reader

Geek porn:

http://rikers.org/gallery/hardware

I'd trade it all for a functional HP-2114B :) I loved the touch
sensitive switched on that model. I'm in SLC Utah if anyone wants to see
any of this.