Need help identifying hardware

[Joe Decker]

Hello! I volunteer at a place that refurbishes donated computers to give to low income families. Recently we received two old HP servers, a HP 9000 E25 and a HP 3000 xxxLX which we were told are in working order even though they came without terminals, etc. It seems our first step would be to power them up and see what happens but I need to know what kind of terminal or console to hook up to them and where... I realize these units are old and tired so it's not an urgent thing since our only plans for them are to play with the Linux Terminal Server Project on them.

Thanks in advanced for any info.

Joe

[Rita C Workman]

Funny you should ask that...I just saw about it on another listing: They asked if they could use an older PC Monitor on a workstation....here's the reply:

When it can handle the resolution: sure.
We do it all the time, putting cheaper PC monitors with either coax or vga
with sync-on-green connection to HP workstations.

1280x1024 at 75 Hz is the highest res/sync the monitor must be capable of.

Certain PC monitors will work, others will not.

The following monitors will work:
View Sonic 17PS
NEC c500
NEC 6F6P


Press the [TAB] after your keyboard's light flash
during the boot process to initiate the automatic monitor selection
process.
When you see a good display press the [Y] to save that monitor type.

Hope this helps,
/rcw

[paul courry]

What city are you in? I might be able to scare up a terminal. Please respond to paul@courry.com

[Philip P. Hartl]

An HP3000 Series X is only supported with an HP ascii terminal connected via the RS232 console port. The terminal can be any HP ascii terminal (we have had limited success using WRQ Reflections emulation). Note the terminal baud rate, parity and other settings must agree with the settings last used. This may take some trial & error.

[Bill Hassell]

Neither the 9000 or the 3000 are PC compatible. They require operating systems which are nothing like Windows (HP-UX which is Unix, and MPE which an HP-proprietary operating system). I don't remember the E25 ever having an option for a video card at all. You'll need an RS-232 terminal as the console.

However, as they were donated, they may have some other limitations (little or no memory, small or missing disks). If you have some Unix experience and lots of free time available, you might try to get to get the E25 up and running. IIRC the E25 needs a special cable to connect to the RS-232 console.

It should be noted that a lot of old HP hardware is showing up as donations or on Internet auctions at drastically reduced prices (as little as 1/100th of the original price), but without software and experience, they aren't too useful.