[Coco] LIF util for OS-9?

[Steven Hirsch]

On Wed, 2 Nov 2011, Steven Hirsch wrote:

> On Wed, 2 Nov 2011, Willard Goosey wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Nov 02, 2011 at 07:34:35AM -0400, Steven Hirsch wrote:
>>> My old HP64000 development system used that format for its diskettes.
>>> Anyone remember those beasts?
>> 
>> I've GOT one!
>> 
>> Mine is very stripped down, unfortunately.  I just have the mainframe.
>> No hard drives or hardware emulators.  And that beast really wants to
>> run off a hard drive.  Still there is now hope, because the HPDRIVE
>> project makes an NT box emulate a hard drive and apparently works with
>> the 64K.
>> 
>> And yes, it is a beast!  I desire to own no computer I can't lift, and
>> the 64000 is pushing that boundry. :-)
>
> Heh.  At one point, I had three of them and two of the monster hard drives. 
> When space got tight, things had to go.
>
> I never was able to find out much of anything about the CPU.  I think it said 
> Intersil on it, but otherwise seemed proprietary to the 64000.  It went with 
> a large plastic storage bin full of memory boards, I/O, EPROM burner, you 
> name it.  The guy who picked it up filled a van :-).

Quick followup:  I found some ancient docs in my archives that talk a bit 
more about the HP64000 CPU.  Transcribed below:

...it used the BPC processor, which is the CPU part of the multi-chip set 
used in the 9825 calculator.  The BPC was a cross between the HP2100 
instruction set and the 21MX instruction set.  It had byte-addressable 
instructions, and a return stack with a JSB variant that would push the 
return address on the stack instead of the first word of the target 
subroutine (necessary if the program was in rom...).

Steve


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