Guestbook

15/11/2009:

I worked in the R&D lab on the 9845 in Loveland for Jack Walden on the PPU firmware. I had also worked on the 9100 and 9830 computers. I feel very lucky to have worked on these exciting products. We had no idea what the PC market would become and that HP would eventually be the leader in PC sales, for now anyhow. I am retired and enjoyed this site. Thanks to the developers. Frank Cada, Loveland (cadabase-1 (at) yahoo.com).

25/08/2009:

This is a fantasic website, I am glad to see so many others appreciate the '45 as much as I did and still do. My bitslice unit, which I bought new in 1982, was the most reliable and productive single piece of equipment I ever purchased, running 8-10 hours a day, 6 days a week, until 1996, without a single moment of downtime. And it still works fine today, though it's only powered up a couple times a month now. With so many thousands of hours spent writing in Basic and Assembler for it (never did figure out how to make binaries), I can't afford to give it up, though I've ported the most frequently used ones to HTBasic. Best wishes - John Bau, Ex designer for Spica (jbau (at) qwest.net)

17/06/2009:

A trip down memory lane, I used the 9845's from the mid 70's through to the mid-late 80's in the offshore oil exploration industry (seismic). I fell in love with them & would still like to own one. They were so easy to work with, debugging software was a cinch, writing "on the fly" specialized software was also a cinch, even with massive array data sets. We typically had 3 on a vessel, 2 in use - 1 spare. Due to the modular construction, trouble shooting was no problem, a fault could be traced to a particular module by inter-swapping & only a faulty module replacement ordered - not sending the complete unit back to a shore based service centre. We used these machines in a harsh marine enviroment & they were surprisingly robust. I personally repaired 2 units that had been in a ship's wheelhouse that had been hit by a giant wave - bridge flooded. Both units were re-stored by simply stripping down, cleaning & reassembling. I still have program listings (HP Advanced Basic) of the software we used, the complexity & functionality of which would daunt a modern programmer, where memory space is not an issue.

Best regards - John Thierjung Ex Western Geophysical employee (jthier13 (at) hotmail.com)

30/01/2009:

Talk about a blast from the past..... The 9845 was my 1st encounter with a desktop..... I was a SSgt at Headquarters USMC... had some cool bosses that sort of had a "go with it attitude".... There was this thing over in the corner under this dust covered tan-brown cloth cover....... I was curious........ Bossman LtCol Frank Soderstrom told me if I could get it to do anything everyone would be amazed....... w/in a week or so of lunch hours & a bit of after hours investigation.... this 'lil beauty was the envy of the entire hallway....... The 4 pen plotter became the gee-whiz momma of HQMC manpower briefings..... people were fighting for access time........ This was well before the IBM PC........ Good memories.... Retired as a Master Sgt....... Semper Fi Z (cas.z (at) verizon.net)

08/12/2008:

Fun site. Wish the pix were better populated. Used (and wrote applicatons for) the 9845 (and 25) extensively back in the early '80s. The things were almost bullet-proof and we wrote all our own apps. I'll try to write up a blurb describing what we did with the 9845's way back when.

choelzer2 (at) yahoo.com

06/12/2008:

Fantastic site. Full of hard to find technical informations. Ansgar, with his great knowledge of the 9845, help me revive my machines on more than one occasion. The hpdrive utility is also very useful. Thank you.

François Lanciault

31/08/2008:

I'm pleased to see that somebody finds my schematics useful. It makes the hours (weeks!) of staring at PCBs well worthwhile :-)

-tony

18/08/2008:

Two days ago, I got a working HP 9845B and lots of documentation. Together with the comprehensive information on your site I'm sure I will have much fun using this marvelous machine. Thank you much for your excellent work! Best Regards from Switzerland, Jürgen Keller

22/03/2008:

Ansgar, This is some of the best work I have ever seen! Well done. The 9845 is a classic, but very complex and tricky old beast. Your site will go a long way to helping the rest of us preserve these old beauties. Thanks for all the hard work. Cheers, Jon Johnston (www.hpmuseum.net)

19/03/2008:

Nice site!

06/02/2008:

Congratulations for the HP 9845 project! For years I searched the web for in-deep information about this dream-computer, but even the museum of hp calculators does not have much info about it. I definitely will re-visit this site often and see what you have achieved. Good luck with it!

I have got some copies (color copies of color pages) of the HP Journal issues describing the HP 9845 and HP 9845C, if that is of any interest.

Best Regards,
Stefan Falk