HP 9000 200 Series Boot Information Screen
HP 9000 200 Series Boot Information Screen
The hardware information first lists the model number of the system. On systems with certain boot ROMs, the system serial number is also shown. Next the system copyright and date are shown. After that the system starts listing the devices installed on the system. Plug in cards are listed by their model number and the HP-IB select number assigned to them. Some cards such as the Floating Point Processor do not have a HP-IB select and these are not listed on some systems. Finally the total amount of available system memory is displayed.
Normally, only the system on the left side of the screen is shown and the system boots automatically. However if the user presses any key while the system is checking the hardware, the system will halt after checking the hardware and will display the information shown on the right. Reportedly, systems with BootROM 3.0L can not be paused and can only be booted on the first system that is found. This information shows operating systems that are stored on ROMs in the system, remote servers and the various floppy and hard drives installed on the system and the operating systems that are available and the label on the disk. The computer normally will automatically boots the first operating system that it finds, however when it is stopped in the display mode the user can chose the operating system to be loaded. Each operating system and disk user label will be displayed with a unique 2 letter code. Press the two letters for the desired system and it will be loaded. Note, that the select letters are case sensitive.
The system shown above has BASIC installed on a remote server with the user label "SYSTEM_BAS", BASIC and HPL installed in ROM, BASIC installed on the 2nd drive (labeled "SYSTEM_BAS") on a HP 9895 floppy drive with a MSU of 801, BASIC installed on a HP 7908 hard drive labeled "SYSbOwn" at unit 1 of MSU 803 and finally FORTH and Pascal installed on a single (partitioned) drive on drive unit 8 of a remote system. Note, that FORTH was not listed as an available operating system for these systems but this screen image was taken directly from an HP manual!