HP 9000/735 specific notes
This machine was an occasion on eBay, from a reseller.
The hardware was cheap, but not so the shipping costs, due to its
weight and bulkiness. In the first place I thought it could be useful
for an OS restauration project, but in view of its unusual graphics option
I decided to use it "as is" and as another HP-UX 10.20 system.
I have more than one box of this kind, but the others
have failed parts (PSU, CPU card etc).
Pixx
The machine plus its CRX-48Z external graphics box.
The machine's interior with all boards removed.
The 735 - like other 7xx - is highly modular.
CPU/RAM
The PA-RISC CPU and the RAM reside on a dedicated module,
accessible only when the I/O board is removed first.
The 735 comes with 16MB nonremovable RAM.
Additional RAM modules can be added in pairs, starting from the innermost
positions first. The modules themselves are extremely
HP-proprietary,
though third party RAM (Kingston et al.) exists.
I found that not all modules out there will work with my model 735.
I suspect my 125 MHz machine refuses RAM chips slower than 60 ns.
I/O
All I/O (SCSI, network, HIL, ...) is handle via a dedicated I/O module.
Disk
The SCSI disk subsystem resides on another drawer, labelled "Fast/Wide SCSI".
Beware ! It's HVD, not LVD ! So one has to spot either a converter
(I've heard such beasts exist) or a very rare original HVD disk.
It took me at least one weekend (countless cycles of power-down, replace-disk, reboot-box)
and quite some googling to find that out the hard way.
My machine came with two disks, 2GB Seagates. Unfortunately 2GB are a bit
small for HP-UX 10.20, but luckily I had two almost forgotten 4GB ST15150WD sitting on
a shelf collecting dust for more than a decade. They worked !
Gfx
My 735 has a rather odd Gfx subsystem, an external box (CRX-48Z) connected
to an interface module within the 735 via a proprietary cable.
PSU
The PSU has an EISA interface card attached to it.
Some models use it to support an HP-IB outlet.
It seems the PSU is a notorious point of failure within
these old boxes. Most of my collected machines are dead
due to broken PSUs. On power-on they stuck with all LEDs
lit except the leftmost one.
Last updated: 3-Mar-2009, M.Kraemer
The machine's interior with all boards removed.
The PA-RISC CPU and the RAM reside on a dedicated module,
accessible only when the I/O board is removed first.
All I/O (SCSI, network, HIL, ...) is handle via a dedicated I/O module.
The SCSI disk subsystem resides on another drawer, labelled "Fast/Wide SCSI".
Beware ! It's HVD, not LVD ! So one has to spot either a converter
(I've heard such beasts exist) or a very rare original HVD disk.
It took me at least one weekend (countless cycles of power-down, replace-disk, reboot-box)
and quite some googling to find that out the hard way.
My 735 has a rather odd Gfx subsystem, an external box (CRX-48Z) connected
to an interface module within the 735 via a proprietary cable.
The PSU has an EISA interface card attached to it.
Some models use it to support an HP-IB outlet.