Ancient HP Vectra

#1 Sat, 13 Sep 2008 - 23:28

I got a HP Vectra computer, a small monitor, and tons of 5.25" floppies for $5. The original owner said that if it didn't work, I could take something else.

BTW: the date on it says it was made in 1986.

#2 Sun, 14 Sep 2008 - 00:41

The original Vectra was HP's first IBM-compatible PC. It came with an Intel 80286 CPU running at 8 MHz. The base model offered 256K RAM, expandable to 3.64Mb and came with seven expansion slots. The keyboard and mouse were connected via an HP-HIL interface. The original Vectra came with one or two 5.25 inch floppy drives and either a 20 Mb or 40 Mb hard disc.

Well, mine comes with a 3.5" disk drive as well as a 5.25" drive, lucky me. I have to wait for the seller to get me a compatible monitor, mouse, and keyboard. The computer apparently has Windows on it, yuck. I might need to get OS/2. The disks included consist of Microsoft Works, MS-DOS 3.3, some ATi software, and some misc. disks.

#3 Sun, 14 Sep 2008 - 16:04

You probably could run OS/2 1.3 on it! [8D] Perhaps Microsoft OS/2? [

] ]'>

#4 Sun, 14 Sep 2008 - 18:38

I find the 5.25" HD amusing in that it takes a significant amount of time to rev up to full speed, and when it turns off, rattles until it has no speed left. :/

I am picking up the mouse, keyboard, and original monitor today. For some strange reason I am hoping the display is a green screen. I will also get zip disks working on this guy also.

#5 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 - 04:20

I think I've got a motherboard and processor card or whatever for one of those kicking around here somewhere. Is it one of the ones with the weird RJ-45 looking keyboard connector?

#6 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 - 04:46

weird RJ-45

The quote does say "HP-HIL".

My HP9000 has one, but I now use the machine headless.

#7 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 - 06:26

Oh yeah, that'll teach me to reply to a thread that I haven't read fully. :lol:

#8 Mon, 15 Sep 2008 - 23:57

Yeah, I got the HP-HIL keyboard and mouse. It's basically HP's ADB. It runs MS-DOS 6 and Windows 3.1 (with Norton Desktop). My ultimate goal for this thing is to get an ethernet card for this thing and run a UNIX webserver.

It's total non-compliance with the "standard" PC is amazing, and MS-DOS 6 says "HP compatiblity mode started" and I hope that won't be an obstacle in getting OS/2 on the dinosaur.

#9 Tue, 16 Sep 2008 - 00:27

My ultimate goal for this thing is to get an ethernet card for this thing and run a UNIX webserver.

You can't really run any form of UNIX on less than a 386.

286 is basically a 8086 with protected memory, it's still a 16 bit processor with 16:16 addressing, not linear 32 bit addressing.

Okay, you can run early versions of QNX that limits the processes to 64k data. God knows what Minix would do.

#10 Tue, 16 Sep 2008 - 03:49

You probably could run OS/2 1.3 on it! [8D] Perhaps Microsoft OS/2? [] ]'>

That sounds so bass ackwards. "OS/2 1.3"

#11 Tue, 16 Sep 2008 - 20:08

You might be able to run Microsoft Xenix!