HP Terminals: 700/60/70 vs. 700/94/96

[Robert_Jewell]

We have a bunch of the older 700/60's and 700/70's that we are looking to replace with the 700/96 terminals (they are readily available). In my case they are acting as consoles for 9000 systems (oldest i think is an E35 or an 827). Are there going to be any implications in doing this? I know the 700/96 is compatible with most 9000 systems, but will there be any differences that i should be aware of?

I noticed that there are manuals for these available and I may purchase a set if there are complications.

Thanks for the help.

-Bob

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Bob,

No problems that I can think of. I'm pretty sure that the 700/96 capabilities are a superset of the 700/60-70, so you should be able to do all & more with the 96 that you can with the earlier units.
I'm also fairly sure that, if necessary, you can pick up Owner's Manuals for the 700/96 available on PartSurfer, but the 96 has a really good built in Help Util in ROM, IIRC.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

They are virtually identical except for the terminal emulation. The 700/9x series are all HP terminals, ideal for HP-UX on *any* HP 9000 model. The lower numbers (4x, 6x, 7x) are meant for applications where the default emulation is not HP and the application is not smart enough to use the curses library to handle all terminal types. Actually, the 700/9x terminals do have emulators for vt100, etc built in but end users must be knowledgeable enough to know how to change the configuration in the terminal.

A note about old versus new HP 9000 servers and the console. From the K-series on back to the beginning (1985) of the HP 9000, HP terminals were pretty much plug-n-play and applications like SAM, swinstall, Glance, etc worked very well. But starting with the A-class, N-class and L-class (and now the rp-series), the new GSP (Guardian Service Processor which is a separate computer) has a terminal-override that causes endless confusion. While the GSP has nothing that is dependent on the terminal type, the designers decided to 'force' one of two (out of hundreds of choices) terminal settings: hpterm and vt100.

The reason given is that the GSP is the console interface and allows multiple console connections at the same time: the standard serial connection, the remote support or modem connection and the GSP-LAN (multiple connections). So even though the GSP is not terminal-sensitive, it does override the two HP-UX terminal ID programs: tset and ttytype and shortcircuits the query sequence. So GSP connections are never queried but are assigned whatever the GSP has set internally. This is why HP terminals (700/9x and newer models) don't seem to work right on the newer servers. The 'standard' fix is to configure the 700/9x to EM100 mode which means "turn the smart terminal into a dumb vt100". That's because the default GSP setting is vt100, not hpterm and thus HP-UX treats the HP terminal as a vt100 causing a jumping cursor on login and vi just doesn't work correctly.

So there are two choices:

1-change the GSP (CA command) to hpterm to match the 'real' console. The advantage is that the HP terminal will be correctly setup in $TERM and tools like vi and SAM/swinstall will behave normally. NOTE: hpterm in the GSP has NO relationship to an Xwindow terminal emualtor of the same name.

2-change the terminal to EM100 mode in the terminal's setup screen. Now, the terminal will behave normally but due to the severe limitations in EM100 mode, SAM/swinstall and tools like Glance will be a pain to navigate. And if the terminal is reset, the emulation goes back to HP again causing emulation mismatch again. You could look at the choices for EM in the terminal config menu and bump it up to a vt200 or higher in which case, menu programs will be a little easier to use. NOTE: the EMxxx modes may have backspace set to DEL (an accomodation for VMS) so you'll need to change the backspace setting too.

Now the sysadmin philosophy: do you change all the new servers to hpterm mode, or change all the real consoles into dumb terminals? Well, since the default from HP is vt100, and using the console for anything but special system maintenance is not recommended, leaving the default at vt100 is probably the best choice. Just paste a note on all the console terminals on how to set the EMxxx mode and also change the backspace mode.

Note also that HP willl no longer be manufacturing terminals in the future so stocking up on 700/xx terminals may be a good idea. Another choice is to use a terminal concentrator or switch so they may be shared across multiple systems.

[Robert_Jewell]

Thank you Bill, for the clarification and for the tips on console management. I have always wondered about the GSP default settings and the reasoning behind it.

-Bob