50th Anniversary of HP's First Computer

[Dave Frederickson]

It's the 50th anniversary of HP's first computer, the 2116A.

[rprosperi]

Nice, thanks for sharing Dave.

HP had such an affinity for 4KB RAM upgrades, they were still offering them 20 years later for the HP-71B.

[d b]

At least they'd gotten smaller.

[Accutron]

Fantastic video. As far as I know, this is the only video of a working 2116A. There are currently only 38 2116/2115/2114 CPUs confirmed to still exist, my 2114B being one of them.

(04-03-2016 12:41 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  HP had such an affinity for 4KB RAM upgrades, they were still offering them 20 years later for the HP-71B.

Going from 4K to 8K on a 2116 was actually a 8KB upgrade. It's a word-addressed machine, and memory was measured in 16-bit K-words.

[HP67]

Great! Wow, 50 years. That's pretty sensational. I had no idea HP made a computer in that era.

[Eddie W. Shore]

In essence, output had to be printed twice: once for the reader, once for the actual output. Happy Anniversary, HP 2116A: a sight to behold.

[Didier Lachieze]

Thanks for the link, very nice video. I had never seen a working 2116 before.
And to put this into perspective: The incredible shrinking PC.

[Steve Simpkin]

Also check out http://www.hp9825.com for more information on the development of the HP9100 and its desktop calculator/computer successors. The custom processor used in the HP 9810A, 9820A, 9830A and HP 9825 was *based* on the 2116A minicomputer. HP was at the forefront of developing early LSI NMOS ICs and helped Motorola and Intel along the way. In fact, if not for the HP 98xx desktop family, Intel *may* not have survived long enough to become what they are today. They certainly got a boost from it. Very fascinating reading!

[PascalG]

Facinating !

50 years ! Engineers at that time sure knew how to build solid computers. Nowadays I wonder if my tablet will last 5 years ...

Thanks very much for this demo (maybe not the "Mother of all demos" but certainly the "Daughter of all demos" ;-)

Pascal

[Steve Simpkin]

(04-05-2016 05:28 PM)Didier Lachieze Wrote:  And to put this into perspective: The incredible shrinking PC.

HP should have at least mentioned the HP 9830A (1972) between the HP 9100A (1968) and the HP-85 (1980). Introduced in 1972 it was a fully integrated, self contained computer (with optional carry handle!) that included BASIC in ROM. Although it was expensive ($5975) and only had a single-line, 32-character alphanumeric LED display, we would not see another fully self contained computer with BASIC in ROM until 1975 (the IBM 5100) and 1977 (the Commodore PET). The Wang 2200 in 1973 was close, but it was a larger, multi-piece solution.
http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp9830.htm