--- title: Hewlett Packard HP-9836 categories: - Computers types: - Professional Computer origins: - U.S.A. years: - '1983' cpus: - Motorola 68000 params: name: HP-9836 image: /media/museum/photos/hp_hp9836_1.jpg company: /companies/hewlett-packard company_name: Hewlett Packard specs: - label: NAME value: HP-9836 - label: MANUFACTURER value: Hewlett Packard - label: TYPE value: Professional Computer - label: ORIGIN value: U.S.A. - label: YEAR value: '1983' - label: KEYBOARD value: full stroke keyboard with numeric keypad and function keys - label: CPU value: Motorola 68000 - label: SPEED value: 8 MHz - label: RAM value: 512 KB (up to 2.5 MB) - label: ROM value: Unknown - label: TEXT MODES value: 80 x 25 - label: GRAPHIC MODES value: Unknown - label: COLORS value: monochrome - label: SOUND value: Unknown - label: SIZE / WEIGHT value: Unknown - label: I/O PORTS value: Centronics, RS232c, HP IB - label: BUILT IN MEDIA value: 1 or 2 x 5''1/4 flexible disc drives - label: OS value: ROM BASIC - label: POWER SUPPLY value: Built-in power supply - label: PRICE value: Unknown tabs: - links links: - title: HP Museum url: http://www.hpmuseum.net text: The best place about old HP computers and calculators. - title: Joe Rigdon pages url: http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/9800.htm text: More information about HP 98xx series comments: - author: Allan Ayres (Canada) date: Wednesday 28th September 2022 text: I have a HP-9836A (Motorola 68000 based)! I can boot it into HPL or a custom oil and gas reservoir analysis application. The entire staff that used this system was laid-off, and by the time I acquired this system a few months later, all of the documention and software had been discarded (other than the two floppy disks in the drives). - author: Tony (N.Z.) date: Saturday 18th December 2021 text: We used these machines for oil-related exploration/navigation/construction etc and the big screen and wheel were a huge improvement on earlier models. They were very reliable, especially considering the very salty environment and the frequent (sometimes rough) transfers between tugboats and rigs etc. I still have some s/w on big floppy disks which astound the youngsters at work ! - author: Roger (United States) date: Monday 12th March 2018 text: I worked for HP from June 1973 until August 2001 when I was laid off. I used to use these computers to program the HP 5046 Digital IC Tester. I remember one version of these has only a single line of red LEDs for the display. Had to scroll through the program code to view. I also used the Series 300 to control the HP 4062B and HP4062UX Semiconductor Test. Ahh, the good old days. I really learned a lot and enjoyed using these. - author: sbez (uk) date: Monday 12th March 2018 text: Yeah Sattellites, back in the daze haze popping up on cinema,tb,radio ''ads'', round around ''in store read''drags, bin o hex vo riga planar TV norweigan woods ,Donald Sutherland, Sattellite dash cash bit rash ghost ship mash ''Mir ship off''philedlphia pascal release of b.c ano dom whirly gig book kit brot puppet show rep E tar jolly jack flap flash ''all back...not tjat''Flash posier''killed all of yerzz,owned,law az..''acts beg get ''un e form''act of ''book it on''must starred tea cheer gas,o yeah that folen yell ''peez an freee dem'' authority piz puzzle polly pot read bell,ye? - author: Luigi Verri (Milano, Italy) date: Friday 26th May 2017 text: |- HP9836 was my first touch in the 80''s with non-mainframe or mini- computing. I arrived from UNIVAC 1108 and from Digital VAX780, and 9836 was a sort of paradise to program!\ We did teletraffic modeling and simualtion on that system,and on the big brother 9020, all with the fantastic HP-Basic language...\ good old time - author: pc macdonald (usa) date: Sunday 21st May 2017 text: Iused the 9816/216, and the 9836 to program custom applications in HPBASIC for my customers who purchased HP vibration measurement products. That language was designed from the ground up to control instruments over the HPIB/GPIB interface that HP invented, and also over other interfaces. The big drawback of this language (which can run as a Windows application nowadays) is the lack of support for STRUCTURES, which can make programming a large, multi channeled system a real pain in the neck. I later ran HP VISTA,HP SINE, and SDRC software on the Series 300 systems under HPUX to make multi channel input/output vibration measurements on the HP3565S hardware. We are talking about testing satelites or aircraft with four to six input shakers, and hundreds of simultaneous acceleration response channels. - author: Roger (USA) date: Tuesday 15th November 2016 text: I used these in the early 80s while working at HP Santa Clara Division to program the HP 5046B/5045A Digital IC Tester. Those were the fun, good old days. - author: Michael (USA) date: Friday 26th August 2016 text: |- We had one of these 9836A''s in our computer office outside of the mainframe room when I served in the Air Force in the early ''80''s. It was used for the Expanded Minuteman Data Analysis system. We had a printer and a plotter for it too. This was very sophisticated stuff back then. - author: Pete Lancashire (United States) date: Tuesday 22nd March 2016 text: |- Last week I found a 9836 (With a tag Upgraded to 9836CU) w/o a display There are two stickers on the unit "1 MB Board Internal set as 1st card" and "NO BATT / Does not start / Boot ?" S/N 2250A01010 Does anyone have the specs for the display and connector pinout ? - author: Ted (usa) date: Tuesday 15th September 2015 text: |- Ted (USA) I still have 2 working HP\ 9836C computers and one non-working HP 9836C computers, numerous connecting cables of various lengths,, (2) 7475A plotters,operator manuals, HP basic coding manuals, 2 HP 9153B disk drives .Anyone interested please contact me tpf@knology.net or tel 727 791 6930 - author: Ted (USA) date: Saturday 29th September 2012 text: |- I have 2 working HP\ 9836C computers and one non-working HP 9836C computers, numerous connecting cables of various lengths,, (2) 7475A plotters,operator manuals, HP basic coding manuals, 2 HP 9153B disk drives .Anyone interested please contact me tpf@knology.net or tel 727 791 6930 - author: zahed (uae) date: Thursday 19th May 2011 text: |- im looking for 9836 computer any one have it, for sale should be in good condition, should be working probability, both drives should be funcation.\ thank\ plz send me the price as soon as possbile\ best regards\ zahed - author: Frank Burgum (U.K.) date: Tuesday 28th October 2008 text: My lab bought an HP9836 in about 1982, together with a pen-plotter, a line printer, and a 15MB hard disk, all connected by HP-IB. The 9836 by itself was about UK£10,000, and the 15MB hard disk box about UK£2,500. Its principal use was to prepare colour acetate slides for presentations, although we also used it to control instrumentation for some of our work. Using the scroll wheel instead of a mouse (turning the wheel moved the cursor left and right, holding SHIFT down made the cursor move up and down) we became quite adept at making line drawings. - author: Shawn Riley (Earth) date: Tuesday 19th December 2006 text: The basic requirement for my department's 1983 generation of new test consoles was that it be realtime for microsecond timetagging of hundreds of events, and distributed to as many as 3 secondary "satellite" subprocessors. The customer directed us to buy HP9836C, later CU, for the operator station, communicating to same-family 9920 rackmount computers, all via Pascal code over HPIB. Today, December 2006, many of these systems are still operating although many have been replaced by pentium 133 MHz based UNIX boxes. This was pre-DOS, pre-ethernet, and it was designed to operate for at least 20 years at a high level of reliability. At that time only HP even understood what reliability calculations meant. The notion of a hard drive being another node on the HPIB bus , as well as a printer, makes todays viewers laugh, but it did work. You can make almost anything work given enough time and money. Reagan had plenty. - author: Ed Olsen (Earth) date: Tuesday 19th December 2006 text: I still use (November 2005) a HP-9836 on a HP 3060 Board Test Station with 9133 and 9121 drives, the OS we have on it is HPL with BTL extensions. The 9836 was a replacement for a HP9825. - author: Erik Metzger (Silicon Valley) date: Wednesday 11th August 2004 text: |- Does anyone have a manual for the 9836 which specifically references the computer's keyboard? Any advice or leads would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,\ Erik related: - /museum/hewlett-packard-hp-9810 - /museum/hewlett-packard-hp-9816 - /museum/hewlett-packard-hp-9825 - /museum/hewlett-packard-hp-9826 - /museum/hewlett-packard-hp-9830 oc_id: 141 source: url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230329012240/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=141 date: '2023-03-29' --- The Hewlett Packard HP 9000 is the ancestor of the actual HP9000 station! The RAM can be extended by blocks of 128 Kb. It is possible to add one or two processors (its power is then brought to 1.7 mips or 2.5 mips). It runs under HP-UX (Unix) and is sold with a database (image 9000), a 3D graphic program (graph 9000), as well as the BASIC, Pascal, FORTRAN and C programming languages. There was a later variant with a 68010 processor that supported HP-UX (the HP version of Unix). It was called the 9836U. There were color versions of both, the 9836C and the 9836CU. Marks Simms reports that the system HP that was sold as the first 32-bit microcomputer was the 9020. It was based on HP's proprietary processor architecture. The 9020 was a desktop system, but was much larger than the 9836 and had only one floppy drive. It only ran HP-UX. After these products had been launched, HP decided to give the HP 9000 name to all its technical computers and the 9836 became the HP 9000 model 236 and the 9020 became the HP 9000 model 520. Add the series 300, 700 and 800 and the term HP 9000 becomes almost meaningless. The Series 200 included the HP-9816, HP-9826, HP-9836, and HP-9836C. The HP-9836 was mainly used for CAE applications, and high-technology (of that time !) in general. **Alan Barrow** reports :\ The 9020 was HP's 32 bit workstation prior to the switch to motorola processors. The 9020 started like the 9836 as basic, but was quickly refocused to HP-UX. It then became the 9000 Series 500. The later 9030 and 9050 offered more expansion and utilized CIO bus cards later used in the first S800's. The Series 500 was a true multi user unix environment and was used both in workstation and mini-computer type environment. One more family note: some of the S200's unix executables would work on the Integral in character mode as well. In fact, they would also work on the S300's in 16 bit mode, I believe. HP did a good job of trying to maintain compatability via standards.