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For its HP 9000 products, HP released cool wire diagrams for PA-RISC servers and workstations of the 1990s.
HP 9000 D-Class, HP 9000 712, HP 9000 715 and T-Class Servers.
CAD and CAE applications on Unix, PA-RISC and HP-UX. Rare glimpse into another universe of computing, mostly hidden in 1990s design offices.
PA-RISC was often used in technical design due to impressive floating point performance. Dozens of CAD, CAE and CAM applications ran on HP-UX, the native use case of HP 9000.
MSC was a significant player in aerospace, vehicle and engineering with PATRAN and NASTRAN for FeA, supported on HP-UX since the 1990s -- after running on Cray & co for decades.
SGI Indigo2 and MSC/NASTRAN for 3D technical design on Unix and RISC. SGI 1996.
"MSC and Silicon Graphics: The Powers That Be. Together, Giving You The Power To Do."
MSC was a long-time developer and vendor of technical design solutions under Unix, first contracted by NASA, with a speciality in Finite Element Analysis (FEA).
Digital DECpc XL - Intel-based midrange servers from DEC, 1994.
"In six months, they lI call you a genius. Next year, a god." DECpc XL with Fast/Wide SCSI 2, PCI, CPU daughtercards with Pentium and planned Alpha AXP.
"People will probably be impressed with your choice of an XL Server in a lot less than six months. And in a year, they'll be downright grateful."
HP 9000 800 Nova: PA-RISC business servers for HP-UX and archetypical 800 series servers from the early 1990s.
Designed by HP's Technical Server division, the "Business Server family spans the deskside to the data center" with one or two 32-bit PA-RISC processors and a proprietary HP architecture not used elsewhere.
Used under HP-UX as "multifunction or dedicated network servers for applications, databases and communications" there were sadly never any other operating systems available.
Early telecommuting at HP in 1992: "Telecommuting project keeps HP execs in-house".
"Six to 10 salespeople" participated in a pilot of HP's Western sales region, signed off by the worldwide HR committee, for working at home four days a week.
Home offices were equipped with HP Vectra 386 PCs, sales software and dial-up to HP 9000 minicomputers for sales data entries and e-mail.
After the pilot, HP envisaged "productivity gains and cost savings in the hundreds of thousands of dollars."
HP PA-RISC VME/VXI computers and HP-RT real-time operating system, mid-1990s.
Don't Blink! Fast! Get 121 MIPS and sub-100 µs real-time performance for VME and VXI, plus the best customer support in the business.
HP 9000 740 VME boards with PA-RISC were popular for signals and control, HP-RT had three releases between 1993 to 1997.
Digital VAXstation II/GPX: The end of isolation for CAE and CASE applications (1986).
VAXstation II/GPX color workstation with Micro VAX II CPU and GPX graphics coprocessor, built-in networking capabilities can off-loading compute-intensive tasks to larger computers. Runs CAE from Scientific Calculations, Silvar-Lisco, Tektronix and VLSI.
Even more colorful HP 9000 PA-RISC 1990s marketing pictures. This time from PA-RISC SMP servers.
HP 9000 K-Class: Business servers, up to 6-way SMP 32 or 64-bit
HP 9000 T-Class: Mainframe-like "Corporate Business" servers, up to 14-way
HP 9000 K-Class "Power Desksides" also available as workstation for 3D (must've been a brutal desk environment)
