Appollo 730
A couple of us are collecting cheap old HP machines for use as a crude parallel processor, for problems like factoring. We currently have about 20, mostly 712/60 with a few 715s.
I've found a pile of machines with an Appollo nameplate, rather than HP, and a 730 model number. They look a fair bit like a 735, deeper case than 712 or 715, boards that slide in from the back. The vendor assures me they use a first generation PA-RISC CPU.
Are these the HP 730 the hardware database mentions? If not, will they run Linux?
Quoted 4 lines · Sandy Harris
I've found a pile of machines with an Appollo nameplate, rather than HP, and a 730 model number. They look a fair bit like a 735, deeper case than 712 or 715, boards that slide in from the back. The vendor assures me they use a first generation PA-RISC CPU.
As of yesterday I got my first HP - it is marked as Hewlett Packard Apollo 735.
I'm told it is actually a 730 that was upgraded to the 735 - but /proc/cpuinfo still shows it as a 730 - hmm:
Quoted 6 lines
processor : 0
cpu family : PA-RISC 1.1a
cpu : PA7000 (PCX-S)
cpu MHz : 99.000000
model : 9000/730
model name : King Cobra (730)
The SCSI is being a bit of a pain - but the machine appears to be missing a SCSI terminator, something that I'll hopefully solve today.
One thing to remember is that this thing uses 'rboot' rather than the normal bootp - you'll need to find yourself a copy of rbootd; I found a copy nestling on the Debian unstable site; it built with a bit of fight on the Linux/Alpha box I'm booting it off.
Dave
Signature · 4 lines
---------------- Have a happy GNU millennium! ---------------------- / Dr. David Alan Gilbert | Running GNU/Linux on Alpha,68K| Happy \ \ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org | MIPS,x86,ARM, SPARC and HP-PA | In Hex / \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org |_______/