14 Facts About HP 3000

HP 3000 series is a family of 16-bit and 32-bit minicomputers from Hewlett-Packard.

Original HP 3000 hardware was withdrawn from the market in 1973 to address performance problems and OS stability.

HP 3000 originally used a 16-bit CISC stack machine processor architecture, first implemented with Transistor-transistor logic, and later with Silicon on Sapphire chips beginning with the Series 33 in 1979.

The HP 3000 CPU was reimplemented as an emulator running on PA-RISC and a recompiled version of the MPE operating system.

Early HP 3000 models had large cabinets with front panels, while later models were made that fit into desks using only terminal consoles for diagnostics, with bootstrap routines in ROM.

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HP 3000 was one of the last proprietary minicomputer systems whose manufacture was curtailed by its vendor, outlasting the PDP-11-descended Digital Equipment Corporation VAX, which was acquired by Compaq and then ultimately by Hewlett-Packard.

Key development that led to the tremendous success of the HP 3000 was the bundling of the HP-developed network database management system called IMAGE that was reputedly inspired by the TOTAL DBMS developed by Cincom Systems, Inc IMAGE was an award-winning database anointed by Datamation within two years of the database's introduction.

The standard terminals for the HP 3000 were the HP 2640 series, which supported block mode data entry from forms, as well as character mode.

PA-RISC based HP 3000's operating system was written primarily in Modcal, HP's extended version of Pascal.

People who used the HP 3000 noticed from the 1970s onward that machines were more reliable compared to other mainframe and minicomputers of the time.

At times the HP 3000 suffered from peripheral support delays or gaps caused by HP's decision to delay supporting, or not support at all, some peripherals on the HP 3000 platform—some of which were supported on the identical HP 9000 hardware.

The processor and memory architecture of the classic HP 3000 were based on a stack machine model, like HP's well-known line of RPN calculators.

In early 2006, Hewlett-Packard announced that limited vendor support for the HP 3000 would be extended by two years for certain clients or geographic regions.

HP 3000 has enjoyed one of the longest lifetimes for any business computer system.