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Does anyone know where I might find information on a model 9826? It may be considered a computer instead of a calculator, which I guess would explain why it's not included in the MoHPC.

Thanx.
Ron

Hi Ron;

Yeh, the 9826 is a computer, from the Computer division of HP, and so is covered here, I think, as just one of the various "others" in the "interesting later machines" category.

It is a full-fledged Motorola 68000-based machine with video screen, 5-1/4" floppy-drive and keyboard all built in. (Do you have one?) It is also sometimes called the HP 9000-236, and this designation clues you to the relationship it has with other machines from HP. The HP 9000 series of computer were intended to run many automated test procedures, and series 200 and 300 were the early iterations of this "workstation" class...

You might find SOME info at:

http://www.intellistar.net/~rigdonj/hpdcalc.htm

Joe Rigdon is an enthusiast of lotsa different old hardware... he set those pages up a while back and may someday work on them some more, but for now they constitute really the ONLY descriptions of the 9000 hardware, and as scanty as it is, it'll have to do until he or *someone* takes up the cause in earnest.

I look on the web for more but only see product listings from various HP re-sellers....

And that happens to be a funny thing about these computers. They are not really "collectibles", BUT they enjoy a small continuing market-- some businesses Still RELY on them to do one automated task or another.

So prices on them are almost arbitrarily controlled by the resellers, info on them is hard to get because it was proprietary to begin with and is now orphaned by HP, and, believe it or not, the OPERATING SYSTEMS for it are STILL available COMMERCIALLY, not from HP anymore but from the resellers, via an agreement between HP and BasicSource:

http://www.basicsource.com/index.html

Explore that link, but have smelling-salts ready for the price page. You'd need not only the license, but also the media and docs... total it up and decide!

So, what I'm saying is that it is nifty to have a 9826, especially IF you have all the original diskettes and maybe a HPIB-based hard-drive to copy them to. You could do HP BASIC or UCSD PASCAL or HP-UX unix work on them, and with HPIB or GPIO and other interfaces, could connect it to many things and have a lot of fun.

If you are thinking of acquiring one, just to knock around on, be aware it is BIG (about a yard deep), expensive and not much real developer or hardware info is available-- a real dearth on the internet-- for no other reason I can think of than no one has really felt a mission to explore the guts of the 9000-200 or 9000-300 series and offer their findings to the world. Calling all tinkerers... ;)

Many of the calc enthusiasts love the HP-85 for the same reasons you might want a 9826 for... AND its op-sys is pretty much built-in. I say that not to divert you from the 9826, but to point out the main reason calculator enthusiasts are less embracing of the 9000-200 and 9000-300 series-- booting from disk instead of just powering on seems to separate the calc people from the 'puter crowd. <shrug>

Anyway, good luck.

Thank you for all that information, Glynn! I've done a little programming in the past, but it sounds like this is a little more machine than I have time to mess with right now. And yeah, that software is a little steep.

But, yes, as a matter of fact, I DO have one. Got it just the other day along with some other things I was more interested in (didn't have it at the time of my first posting), and haven't had time to fire it up yet. It has some kind of disk with it and some documentation, but I don't know what all yet. Eventually, I'll plug it in and see if it works, then probably sell it (ha-ha, like all the other stuff that's been in my garage for years).