---
title: Hewlett Packard HP-9826
categories:
- Computers
types:
- Professional Computer
origins:
- U.S.A.
years:
- '1981'
cpus:
- Motorola 68000
params:
  name: HP-9826
  image: /media/museum/photos/hp_9826_system_s1.jpg
  company: /companies/hewlett-packard
  company_name: Hewlett Packard
  specs:
  - label: NAME
    value: HP-9826
  - label: MANUFACTURER
    value: Hewlett Packard
  - label: TYPE
    value: Professional Computer
  - label: ORIGIN
    value: U.S.A.
  - label: YEAR
    value: '1981'
  - label: END OF PRODUCTION
    value: Unknown
  - label: BUILT IN LANGUAGE
    value: HP BASIC in ROM or separate diskette
  - label: KEYBOARD
    value: Typewriter style. 74 keys + 24 function keys
  - label: CPU
    value: Motorola 68000
  - label: SPEED
    value: 8 MHz
  - label: RAM
    value: 128 KB up to 2 MB
  - label: ROM
    value: Unknown
  - label: TEXT MODES
    value: Unknown
  - label: GRAPHIC MODES
    value: b/w graphics hardware and soft support
  - label: COLORS
    value: Monochrome
  - label: SOUND
    value: Beeper
  - label: I/O PORTS
    value: HP-IB port, 8 expansion slots
  - label: BUILT IN MEDIA
    value: 1 5.25
  - label: OS
    value: HPL
  - label: POWER SUPPLY
    value: Built-in power supply unit
  - label: PERIPHERALS
    value: All HP-IB peripherals
  - label: PRICE
    value: Unknown
  tabs:
  - photos
  - adverts
  - links
  photos:
  - title: 'SYSTEM #1'
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/photos/hp_9826_system_s2.jpg
  - title: 'SYSTEM #2'
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/photos/hp_9826_system_s3.jpg
  - title: REAR PANEL
    subtitle: ''
    text: HP-IB connector and expansion slots.
    image: /media/museum/photos/hp_9826_rearpanel_s1.jpg
  adverts:
  - title: HP BROCHURE
    subtitle: ''
    text: Extract of an HP sales brochure describing the models of the HP 9000-200 series.
    image: /media/museum/pubs/hp_9826_salesbrochure_s1.jpg
  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: Jon Leech (USA)
    date: Monday 29th July 2019
    text: They were 68000, or possibly 68010, not 6800. I was in the same classes as David BTW - long time no see! Nice little machines, for the time.
  - author: David Levine (USA)
    date: Wednesday 26th August 2009
    text: |-
      The HP-9826 was a screamingly fast and powerful machine for its time. It was much better than the IBM PC with twice the clock speed and a 16 bit bus, an external hard drive, a digitizing tablet, and 2 MB of RAM. That entire package I''m sure cost over $10000.

      I used one in Jim Blinn''s CS286 computer graphics course at Caltech with an external 16 color monitor (Barco) for rendering. The programming language was Pascal.

      We called them "chipmunks". I thought that was just a cute nickname but I recently read that was the internal HP codename for the machine.

      I spent hundreds of hours cooped up in a room with them completing a program that was used to design integrated circuits.
  related:
  - /museum/hewlett-packard-hp-9810
  - /museum/hewlett-packard-hp-9816
  - /museum/hewlett-packard-hp-9825
  - /museum/hewlett-packard-hp-9830
  - /museum/hewlett-packard-hp-9836
  oc_id: 1068
  source:
    url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230530203910/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1068
    date: '2023-05-30'
---

The all-in-one HP 9826 computer was the successor of the 9825. It was the transition machine between the calculators/computers 9800 family and the HP-9000-200 desktop computer series. As it belonged to both the families, it was also called HP 9000-236

It was a robust and compact 6800-based machine which featured a 7" monochrome display, a complete keyboard (including first use of soft-keys and the scroll wheel at leftand), a 264 KB, 5.25" floppy-disk drive. On the rear panel, one also found one HP-IB port and 8 expansion slots.

Like the 9825, it ran HPL, but could also run BASIC and Pascal. The Basic interpreter was developped by HP and was also known as "Rocky Mountain BASIC", or RMB. This version would evolve into the HP-BASIC for the series-300 and HP-UX machines.

The 9826 was choosen and intensively used by the Walt Disney studios for "Tron", the first movie that used a computer to control all the processes implemented during the shoot, from camera adjustments to graphic and text superimpositions.