HELP with Old HP Equipment

James Deptuck

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Feb 27, 1997, 3:00:00 AM2/27/97

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Hi,
I have come across some old HP drives from VAX type machines. They are...

7933 Disc Drive
7937 Disc Drive

Can someone point me in the direction for specs for these units. I'm
particularly interested in interfacing them with a modern PC based system.
Mostly for interest's sake. :-)

Thanks for any info!

James

jdep...@dlcwest.com

Ron Lauzon

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Feb 28, 1997, 3:00:00 AM2/28/97

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> I have come across some old HP drives from VAX type machines. They are...
>
> 7933 Disc Drive
> 7937 Disc Drive
>
> Can someone point me in the direction for specs for these units. I'm
> particularly interested in interfacing them with a modern PC based system.
> Mostly for interest's sake. :-)

Well..... As for pointing you in any direction, the only places where you'd
find the specifications are in one of HP's old garbage dumps, or someplace
where they still actually *use* this stuff (like where I work).

This is from an HP catalog dated 1988:

The 7933 is a 404 MB hard drive. 35.1 ms access. 1K/sec transfer rate. If
it's a 7933XP, it has cache. 92 sectors/track. 256 bytes/sector.

The 7937 is a 571 MB hard drive. 30.8 ms access. 1K/sec transfer rate.
Again, if it's the XP model, it has cache. 123 sectors/track. 256
bytes/sector. 1396 tracks/data surface. 13 data heads. 7 disks.

The systems you got them out of were probably HP 1000 A-Series computers.
These are the systems that I currently work on. The A-Series uses an HPIB bus
to hook up all perhipherials.

If you wanted to hook up these hard drives to a modern PC, you would need an
HPIB (or GPIB) interface board for your PC plus the drivers to make your PC
talk to the drive. The only company that I am aware of that makes such a
board is National Instruments and they would want more for the board than what
a new 1.6GB EIDE hard drive would cost today.

Robert J. Niland

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Mar 5, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/5/97

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James Deptuck (jdep...@dlcwest.com) wrote:

> I have come across some old HP drives from VAX type machines. They are...
> 7933 Disc Drive
> 7937 Disc Drive

I seriously doubt those drives came from a DEC VAX. More likely from an
HP1000/RTE, HP3000/MPE or HP9000/Unix system.

The 7933 is 404 MB and uses the HP-IB interface (IEEE-488), HP CS/80
command set on HP AMIGO protocol. There are no longer any DOS or
Windoze drivers for HP-IB/CS80, and those that did exist probably
never supported the 7933.

The 7937 is 571MB. The interface may vary:
7937FL (HP FibreLink)
7937H (HP-IB) or
7937S (SCSI).

If FL or HP-IB, you are out of luck. If SCSI, you may be able to
connect it to a PC SCSI card and obtain all you need to know from the
describe command (e.g. Adaptec SCSI Explorer).

Considering that you can get a 1GB EIDE drive for under $200 at your
nearest PC vending machine, neither the 7933 nor the 7937 is worth the
electricity it takes to run it.

Regards, 1001-A East Harmony Road
Bob Niland Suite 503
Internet: r...@sni.net Fort Collins
Unless otherwise specifically stated, Colorado 80525 USA
expressing personal opinions and NOT
speaking for any employer, client or
Internet Service Provider.

Patrick Thrapp

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Mar 7, 1997, 3:00:00 AM3/7/97

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Robert J. Niland <r...@csn.net> wrote in article
<5fihhh$r...@news-2.csn.net>...

> James Deptuck (jdep...@dlcwest.com) wrote:
>
> > I have come across some old HP drives from VAX type machines. They
are...
> > 7933 Disc Drive
> > 7937 Disc Drive
>
> I seriously doubt those drives came from a DEC VAX. More likely from an
> HP1000/RTE, HP3000/MPE or HP9000/Unix system.
>

[snip]

>
> Considering that you can get a 1GB EIDE drive for under $200 at your
> nearest PC vending machine, neither the 7933 nor the 7937 is worth the
> electricity it takes to run it.

And the wind tunnel effect for sound. On our old HP3000(7 yrs or so) those
could get to hummin'. I think I still have some ringin' in my ears. (:

>
> Regards, 1001-A East Harmony
Road
> Bob Niland Suite 503
> Internet: r...@sni.net Fort Collins
> Unless otherwise specifically stated, Colorado 80525
USA
> expressing personal opinions and NOT
> speaking for any employer, client or
> Internet Service Provider.
>

--
woof woof,
Patrick Thrapp(#3) http://www.wolfenet.com/~pthrapp