ZXnet

HP 9000/360

Introduced alongside the 9000/370 in 1988, this is one of the later series 300 machines. It features a 25MHz Motorola 68030 CPU with 4MB of RAM on the CPU card, upgradable to 8, 12 or 16MB of RAM with a daughterboard that attaches to the CPU card.

The CPU card itself (including any memory daughterboard) occupies only one of the four DIO-II slots available in the chassis and has no I/O itself.

A minimal set of I/O is normally provided by a System Interface or Human Interface Card which occupies the second DIO-II slot. My machine has a 98562-56533 which has:

• 10base2 LAN
• DE9F RS-232
• RCA Speaker
• HP-HIL
• HP-IB
• High-speed HP-IB on a daughterboard with attached cable

Serial Console

If the machine doesn't have a graphics card (or it does, but you don't want to use it), you can instead use a serial console. In order to do this, you need to set the REM switch on the HPIB/RS232 switch block on the System Interface/Human Interface card to ON.

For connecting your PC running a terminal emulator to the RS-232 port on this card, just use a normal straight-through serial cable. A null-modem cable is not required and will not work.

Other Notes

• If the computer has been operated in a dusty environment, a significant amount of dust can accumulate on the backplane and the parts of the cards and power supply closest to the fans. When left for a long time, dust can combine with humidity to result in rust.
• Cards may contain glass tantalum capacitors that look kind of like diodes. Like the normal kind of tantalum capacitors, these can fail short. But instead of making smoke and fire, they just pop and leave behind glass fragments.
• To remove the top cover, undo the two captive screws above the power supply and remove the power supply cover. The top cover should then slide backwards and up. If an expander chassis is attached, you'll need to remove that first and then undo the remaining screw on the bracket that the expander chassis mounts to.
• To remove the power supply, undo the two captive screws and take off the power supply cover. Then undo the single screw in the bottom of the power supply area and pull firmly on the plastic ring to slide the PSU out of the back of the case.
• Capacitor C109 in the PSU (the 330uF 15V aluminium electrolytic next to the ceramic resistor near the power switch) should probably be replaced. It was leaking in both of the power supplies in my HP 9000/370.

My Machine

I have only one of these which has an 98642A ASYNC MUX card installed in one of its DIO-I slots, and the other DIO-I slot empty.

The machine was originally owned by Waikato University and was named Troy. The Computer Information card I received with it gives the model as 360/98579A COMPUTER and lists its factory installed boards as:

• 98579-66501 CPU 68030
• 98562-66533 I/O Card
• 98562-66531 FHPIB
• 98267A - 4MB RAM

Combined with the 4MB integrated into the CPU card, that gives this machine 8MB total:

I originally got this machine as part of a large lot of HP9000 bits, but due to a lack of HP-IB drives (there is no SCSI interface) I've never been able to do much with it. In March 2025 I gave it a good cleaning and replaced some bad capacitors in the PSU as well as a failed glass tantalum capacitor on the CPU card getting it back running again. running again as can be seen in the screenshot of K95 above. My plans for it from here are to either network boot NetBSD on it, or perhaps try booting HP-UX from an emulated HP-IB drive.

Documentation

• /360 and /370 Service Handbook (Local Copy)
• /360 and /370 Service Information Manual (Local Copy)
• 98642A ASYNC MUX Installation Manual

Links

• HP 9000/360 at the HP Computer Museum
• hp-series300.net - Lots of information on series 300 machines such as the 370