--- title: Hewlett Packard HP-9830 categories: - Computers types: - Professional Computer origins: - U.S.A. years: - '1972' cpus: - 4-board CPU set params: name: HP-9830 company: /companies/hewlett-packard company_name: Hewlett Packard specs: - label: NAME value: HP-9830 - label: MANUFACTURER value: Hewlett Packard - label: TYPE value: Professional Computer - label: ORIGIN value: U.S.A. - label: YEAR value: December 1972 - label: END OF PRODUCTION value: '1977' - label: BUILT IN LANGUAGE value: HP BASIC Plus - label: KEYBOARD value: Full stroke 107 key with numeric keypad, Function and arrow keys - label: CPU value: 4-board CPU set, 16--bit microprogrammed processor - label: SPEED value: Unknown - label: RAM value: '3.5 KB up to 16 KB - 9830B: 16 KB' - label: ROM value: From 15 KB up to 62 KB (31 KB of 16-bit words) - label: TEXT MODES value: LED display. 1 line x 32 alphanumeric chars. - label: GRAPHIC MODES value: None - label: COLORS value: Red! - label: SOUND value: Built-in speaker and "BEEP" command in the Basic interpreter - label: SIZE / WEIGHT value: 46 (W) x 63.5 (D) x 15.2(H) cm / 21 kg - label: I/O PORTS value: 5 x ROM module slots, 4 x interface module slots - label: BUILT IN MEDIA value: Cartridge tape drive (2 x 64 KB sides) - label: POWER SUPPLY value: Built-in power supply unit - label: PERIPHERALS value: 'I/O modules: Serial, Parallel, BCD, external FDD, HDD, General I/O, AD/DA converter, etc...' - label: PRICE value: $6000 tabs: - photos - adverts - links photos: - title: TOP VIEW subtitle: '' text: '' image: null - title: KEYBOARD CLOSE-UP subtitle: '' text: '' image: null - title: LEFT SIDE subtitle: '' text: Five ROM cartridges could be plugged in by the user. Four internal slots for additional ROM firmware were also available. image: null adverts: - title: 1976 ADVERT subtitle: '' text: for the 9815, 9835 and 9830 systems image: null - title: DECEMBER 1972 HP JOURNAL subtitle: '' text: Courtesy **Joe Rigdon** image: null 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 - title: The Old Calculators Web museum url: http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/hp9830a.html text: Complete page about the HP-9830 comments: - author: Jalaluddin Morris (PJ, Selangor, Malaysia) date: Tuesday 11th January 2011 text: |- I worked at the Bureau of Ag. Economics, Canberra and an HP salesman tried to sell us one but unfortunately we never did. He told me that a Brisbane accountant bought one and programmed some accounting work on it, then there was the 1974 flood and his beloved computer was buried under about 20 feet of mud and water. He rang up the salesman and the two of them took it to the accountant''s home, opened it up, flushed out the mud with the garden hose, dried it with the account''s wife''s hair dryer, put it back together and it worked perfectly. He also told me that some of the calculations to get Apollo13 back safely were done on a 9830 series, but since Apollo 13 began 1970/4/11 and the 9830 came out December 1972 I assume this must have been a NASA "special" prototype. - author: Glenn Boswell (USA) date: Sunday 24th April 2016 text: My first paid programming job was on a HP9830B with 15k memory and 5MB removable HD platter. I talked the boss to buy this over an IBM 5100 with cartridge tapes only. It was fun with only 36/72 character visual display. Loved it then moved to a Service Bureau with IBM 360 20/50s and RPGII .. :-( Been a fun ride and as I write this on a MBP 16GB 1TB I''m glad I started on a HP9830B :-) - author: Alvin Ginsburg (United States) date: Friday 4th September 2015 text: I bought one of these at IBM in order to get funding for the IBM 5100. The management didn''t believe you could actually put a computer on a disk, and lo and behold, without a raised floor. So, I bought the HP 9830, a Wang 2200 and an MCM/70. When Dave Slattery a vice president of development told me you couldn''t put a Basic compiler into less than 128k I wheeled one of these machines into his office. I got the funding, a story for another day about politics and bureaucracy. - author: BOB date: Thursday 6th January 2011 text: I want this for Christmas!!!(2011) please with a f\*\*\*''n cherry on top! - author: Jim D. date: Monday 13rd December 2010 text: |- I used this in high school in 1978 or 1979. It was in the dean''s office and was not available for use by the general student population. I felt so special to be able to program it to do silly things like print banners on the thermal printer 9866. One thing I''m wondering: it had a hard drive next to it which was about 3''x3''x3'' and creaked and groaned whenever it was accessed. Supposedly it had a capacity of 5MB! Anyone know what it might have been? - author: Kit Richer (Australia) date: Sunday 19th September 2010 text: I first ran across this wonderful unit in 1972 when a group of us engineers tried to get one purchased to replace our only Oliveti Programmer 101. We wern''t allowed access to the mainframe as it was a "Finance" machine not to be contaminated by engineers. We did some great experimentation including using an IBM typwriter to get letter quality output but never bought one for our division (quoted price 5000AUD base unit) but another division bought a few that they kept using until at least early 90s. - author: R.T.Dickinson (UK) date: Sunday 28th August 2005 text: From around 1975 to 1985 the British company I worked for provided online geological and data monitoring services on ofshore oil rigs using initially HP9821's but moving to HP9830's. Two 9830's were used in each offshore laboratory. One for real time data acquistion and display of of drilling and engineering parameters and the other for running geological and engineering programs offline. - author: E.S. Prins (Canada) date: Monday 7th March 2005 text: 'HP-9830: I used this computer in college in 1977-8, and on my first job. I ended up buying one when my company switched to an IBM System/34, a predecessor to the AS/400 (now iSeries), and still have it, though I haven''t fired it up for 10 years or so. I remember that the 32-character screen scrolled up to 80 characters of text, and that it could be hooked up to a plotter. At one point, I wrote programs that sorted sales data requiring 8 tapes to be inserted one after another, then 7 tapes, then 6, until all data was sorted. I remember creating a program in 1982 that let me type in running race results, and then print out lists sorted by time, within various age groups. It had an incredibly high-quality keyboard. I remember that the quickest was to store and access programs or files on tape was to create little ''dummy'' files inbetween during the cassette tape formatting.' 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-9836 oc_id: 950 source: url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230405101234/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=950 date: '2023-04-05' --- The HP **9810**, **9820** and **9830** were all announced simultaneously by HP in the December 1972 HP Journal. They were all four bit machines and all of them used a serial bus internally. The 9830 was by far the most capable machine of this group and ran what HP called BASIC Plus. In many ways, it was one of the first true "Personal Computers" ever marketed. The 9830 was also significantly more expandable than the 9810/9820, with five user-accessable ROM cartridge slots. The **9830-B** was introduced four years later in the 1977 HP catalog. HP said that three things set the HP 9830 apart from the other desktop systems:\ • First, it's used of **BASIC Plus** with it's English like vocabulary and structure,\ • Second, the entire operating system and firmware were in ROM and did not take up any of the read/write memory space,\ • Third, the use of the cassette tape drive with features that they said were only found on large computers.\ The basic 9830 came with 1760 16 bit words of memory, a 32 character display, the cassette tape drive and a large well-featured keyboard. In addition to the ROM cartridge slots, the 9830 could hold three more ROMs internally. The internal ROMs were on cards instead of plug in cartridges and had to be installed by HP. When the internal ROMs or extra memory were installed, a sticker that listed the ROM or new memory size and option number was added to the outside ROM door. The **9830A** came with 3520 bytes (1760 words) of memory and could be expanded up to 15808 bytes (7904 words). The **9830B** came with 15808 bytes (7904 words) of memory and could be expanded up to 30144 bytes (15072 words). The Matrix and String Variables ROM cards were also standard in the 9830-B. The HP 9830 was commonly found with a special version of HP **9866 printer** (see picture) that sits on top of the calculator and looks like it's part of the original machine. The 9866 was a full width page printer that printed up to 80 columns of characters on thermal roll paper. It could print a full 80 character width using 5 x 7 dot matrix characters at 240 lines per minute. It could also print simple plots and tables or other formatted text. The "B" version of this printer was introduced in 1977 and it added the capability of printing both upper and lower case letters and vertical lines. The printer used a short cable that connected to a special socket on the back of the computer. The HP 9830 was dropped from the HP catalog after 1977 or 1978. But, in 2000, some companies still used it...since 1975! Thanks to [Joe](http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/joespage.htm) for most of the information. --- **Kevin Kost** specifies:\ The HP-9830a was the first machine I ever programmed (in high school). In addition to the things noted in your article...\ \- The machine was identified as "Desktop Calculator" on its label, not "Professional Computer".\ \- The version of HP BASIC in ROM included buit-in matrix manipulation commands... very rare in those computing days.\ \- Internally the machine used a serial bus architecture.\ \- The price you mention might be low. I remember hearing that our system (9830 + thermal printer + card reader) was purchased for \~$30k.