From: larry@hpcvusd.cv.hp.com (Larry Woestman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Old HP Workstations
Keywords: Integral PC
Date: 18 Nov 92 16:41:05 GMT
Organization: Hewlett Packard, User Interface Technology Division

In article <1ed3hdINNlv1@csc2.anu.edu.au>, clement@arp.anu.edu.au (CJ Canon) writes:
|> Hi. A few years back a friend of mine (who was a top HP salesman here
|> in Canberra) showed me a machine he'd brought home for the weekend. It
|> looked a lot (like very similar to) a portable sewing machine. It had
|> much the same sorta shape/styling etc as the IBM PS/2 model 75, ran
|> some version of unix and had an amber screen builtin.
|> 
|> What I'd like to know is,
|> 	1) What is the name/model number of this machine?
|> 	2) What version of the one true OS did it run?
|> 	3) When were they made?
|>   and   4) if there's anyone in Oz who has one would they consider
|> 	    letting me have it?
|> 
|> I'm finishing my second year of a Maths/Physics degree @ANU and will
|> be transferring to Brisbane next year. I don't have a machine to work
|> with, and I figure that this machine would be very interesting to use
|> and maintain, to say the least.
|> 
|> Thanks in advance,
|> 
|> CJ Canon.

It sounds like you ran into an HP Integral PC.  This was a box based
around an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 running a version of HP-UX out of rom.
The box included a 512x255 dot electroluminescent display, 512 kbytes of
ram, a floppy disc drive, an HP Thinkjet printer, and an HP-IB
interface.  It was available from around 1984 through around 1986 (my
memory is a bit vague on the exact dates).

The operating system met the AT&T SVR2 specs, ran confortably off of a
single floppy disc, required no system administration, and - o/s, device
drivers, window system (HP proprietary), and all - fit into less than
512 k-bytes of rom.  With an (optional) 2 megabyte plug-in rom card you
could get all but about 40 of the programs most people think of when
they think of the Unix* operating system, including a very complete C
development environment.

My IPC has never needed more than 1.5 megabytes of ram, and could often
get by with 3/4 megabytes, since the programs reside in rom, and only
the data has to fit into ram (or on disc).

Sounds like a pretty good system for the time, right?  It was, but it
was in a "luggable" package, and the display was very expensive.  It was
one of the earliest flat panel electro-luminescent displays, and the
display technology never really came down in price.  A fully configured
IPC (with 2Mbyte rom board, total of 1.5Mbyte ram) would have sold for
about $8000, which was about $3000 more than a functional equivalent
desktop system would have sold for.  It was just too expensive, unless
you had a desperate need for a portable box with a unix-type operating
system.  Also, HP-UX included a lot more than just what was in the AT&T
SVR2 specifications, and the Integral PC never had very many
applications ported to it, so it was pretty much limited to the
do-it-yourself software developer market.

I still have an Integral PC at home, and I use it regularly for software
development, letter writing, and running programs I have written.  I have
also just finished porting Perl 4.035 to it, so it still can be useful.

If it wasn't clear by now, I was involved with the development of the IPC.
It had its good points and bad points, it was not commercially sucessful,
and its hardware is now obsolete.  On the other hand, if you can find a
working model, it can still be useful.

Larry Woestman
Member of Technical Staff
User Interface Technology Division - Corvallis
Hewlett Packard Co.
1000 NE Circle Blvd.
Corvallis, Or. 97330

email:	larry@cv.hp.com  or hplabs!hp-pcd!larry
phone:	(503) 750-4111

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Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp