HP 9000 Model 425e


 
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General Technical Information

HOSTNAME BOFUR
SYSTEM CPU Motorola MC68040 @25MHz
CACHE (2nd, 1st D/I) 0 KB, 4 KB / 4 KB
RAM  40 MB  (Max. 48 MB)
SCSI BUS Built-in SCSI-2
OPTION BUS N/A
GRAPHICS Built-in SGC / EVRX framebuffer, 8-plane color / grey scale (dip switch selectable) 1280x1024 @75Hz
HARD DISK DRIVE 1 GB DEC RZ26 SCSI-2 5400 RPM
CD-ROM DRIVE Toshiba SCSI CD-ROM in an external box
NETWORK 10base2 / 10baseT ethernet (jumper selectable)
AUDIO Onboard audio chip
OS HP-UX 9.10
YEAR 1991
SPEED 16.6 VAX MIPS
POWER CONSUMPTION (MAX. / MEASURED) 100 / 55 W
COMMENTS This machine can run HP-UX/m68k, NetBSD/hp300 (in HP-UX mode) or DomainOS (in Domain mode)
ESTIMATED PRICE '91 $15,000

History and other comments

I bought this obsolete HP box on auction in June 2006. At first it didn't show many signs of life, but after some examination I found out that the memory SIMMs had been installed improperly. After reseating the SIMMs the system showed a normal startup boot console. The 425e will accept only HP special SIMMs and there are 6 sockets on the mainboard, 3 banks of 2 SIMMs each. If you have SIMMs of different size, then the higher capacity pair of SIMMs must be installed in the first bank (J5, J6), with additional pairs added in decreasing order of capacity in the next memory bank (sockets J4, J3) and so on. My 425e has 4 SIMMs installed like this (8 + 8 + 4 + 4) MB = 24 MB total.

The HP 9000/425E and the HP 9000/710 computers are quite similar, some parts are even interchangeable, for example the disk brackets and parts of the case. I could also mention that if you ever need to replace the CPU in a 300 or 400 series HP 9000 computer, you could get it from an older m68k Mac. For example a Quadra 700 will have the same chip in the same package as the 425E.

In December 2006 I got some useable installation media for this computer. The basic HP-UX 9.x CD-ROM installation kit consists of 2 CDs, one installation/boot CD and another containing an "update" to the full OS. I selected a 1 GB disk for the installation because HP-UX 9.x cannot partition a larger disk during the standard installation. Also, there is a funny bug in the installation procedure, you have to switch off your CD-ROM drive after inserting the second CD during the installation, and switch it back on again and after that press <return>, otherwise it's never mounted and the installation will fail. This is what you should try if you get an error message complaining about the CD-ROM device /dev/bsrc.
 
Once HP-UX is installed,  you can login and enter the VUE environment (provided that you are on a graphical console) by changing runlevel, issue an init 4 command. At first my machine started up X11 with only B/W display, then I noticed that I could flip some dip switches on the mainboard to get the best option, 8-bit color 1280x1024@75Hz. IMO this old m68k computer can manage X11 and the VUE environment very well, it feels useable and not at all too slow, as one might expect.

In May 2007 I got some more SIMMs for this computer, so I upgraded RAM to 40 MB using 4 x 8 MB + 2 x 4 MB SIMMs. The 8 MB SIMMs I have are labelled "710 SIMM" so I believe that you can use the same SIMMs in both 710 and 425e HP 9000's (correct me if I'm wrong, please ;-).
 
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Last updated:  4-6-2007