Thanks for the video. Fantastic to see the HP-150 running! This was the first "PC" I ever owned (second to a Sinclair ZX Spectrum) and I still have both, although the HP-150's screen won't come on. I bought the HP-150 at a discounted employee price after doing a summer job at HP Europe while I was at high school. It wasn't very quick even by 1984 standards (8-bit ext. bus 8088 CPU), but with its slick touch screen and compact size, it was an amazing piece of kit. I loved playing Sargon (Chess) on it. I remember Hertz using them for many years as a self-service terminal. It was a futuristic machine but having implemented one of the very first 3.5" floppy drives (710kB), it had a terrible design flaw: If you did not press the eject button hard enough, the diskette would not eject fully (lift up and pop right out), instead it would just lift up in its tray. Unfortunately, this is how my HP-150 "died": Someone not familiar with the computer, ended up doing exactly that and then yanked out the diskette. This pulled and destroyed the fragile heads of the floppy drive. I regretted not getting the optional HP-9133 hard drive unit. The floppy drive you have in your video looks different from the one I had. I believe I must have had the 9123D. While on the subject, I remember that HP had a stock of HP-110 portable computers stranded in a warehouse of the export processing zone of the airport. I desperately wanted to buy one of them too. However, because they were about to launch the HP-110 Plus (with a larger screen), and it was complicated to get them out of the EPZ, that stock of old 110s got destroyed. We were not even allowed to salvage or purchase any. :((
This is a nice overview of the HP-150, which holds a special place in my heart. My dad's architectural office was full of them, running AutoCAD. As a kid I remember pointing at something on the screen not knowing it was a touchscreen, and wound up doing something that my dad had a hard time undoing... Several years later as a teenager I wound up using an old one from his office as a dumb terminal using the terminal built into ROM. I also played around in DOS on it, though I couldn't do much as I only had a couple pieces of software. One of them was the demo program that you show in your video. AFAIK it was one of the very first PCs to use the soon ubiquitous 3.5" floppy disk. In the stack of disks you show, I see a couple of the early ones with the shutter that could latch in place.
Thanks for sharing! You’re right on the floppy drives - depending on where you look it was either the first or one of the first commercially available micros to use them
I would REALLY love to see the special build of Windows running on one of these. Wonder how difficult it would be to implement a hard drive with modern tricks and hardware. Any thoughts?
Nice review of the HP150 and good to see that the HP Computer Museum's website was helpful in your video. Would you be able to advise the model number of the keyboard for that unit? The model number will be underneath the keyboard and will be a 4XXXXXA type number. Also, is your keyboard a US or UK english one - UK English will have a pound sign instead of a $ sign. I will update the HP Computer Museum website with that info. We dont have a physical collection any more and have received a question on the keyboard model number. Thanks in advance - David Collins HP Computer Musuem.
Hi David, I’m sorry but I sold this system on a while back. Thank you for all you do with the HO Computer Museum though, you were essential in exploring this machines capabilities
It's possible to emulate hard and floppy disk drives using a pc with a gpib card. This should allow you to try out Windows on the 150. Nice video; thank you for making it.
The software is called HPdrive. It works with Windows but is a bit fussy about the GPIB card. I use a Windows 200 machine with an old ISA card. It works with a lot of HP stuff.
Thanks for the video. Fantastic to see the HP-150 running!
This was the first "PC" I ever owned (second to a Sinclair ZX Spectrum) and I still have both, although the HP-150's screen won't come on. I bought the HP-150 at a discounted employee price after doing a summer job at HP Europe while I was at high school. It wasn't very quick even by 1984 standards (8-bit ext. bus 8088 CPU), but with its slick touch screen and compact size, it was an amazing piece of kit. I loved playing Sargon (Chess) on it. I remember Hertz using them for many years as a self-service terminal. It was a futuristic machine but having implemented one of the very first 3.5" floppy drives (710kB), it had a terrible design flaw: If you did not press the eject button hard enough, the diskette would not eject fully (lift up and pop right out), instead it would just lift up in its tray. Unfortunately, this is how my HP-150 "died": Someone not familiar with the computer, ended up doing exactly that and then yanked out the diskette. This pulled and destroyed the fragile heads of the floppy drive. I regretted not getting the optional HP-9133 hard drive unit.
The floppy drive you have in your video looks different from the one I had. I believe I must have had the 9123D.
While on the subject, I remember that HP had a stock of HP-110 portable computers stranded in a warehouse of the export processing zone of the airport. I desperately wanted to buy one of them too. However, because they were about to launch the HP-110 Plus (with a larger screen), and it was complicated to get them out of the EPZ, that stock of old 110s got destroyed. We were not even allowed to salvage or purchase any. :((
Thanks for sharing! Lovely to read of people’s experiences with these machines
I've been thinking about it for a long time.
This is a nice overview of the HP-150, which holds a special place in my heart. My dad's architectural office was full of them, running AutoCAD. As a kid I remember pointing at something on the screen not knowing it was a touchscreen, and wound up doing something that my dad had a hard time undoing...
Several years later as a teenager I wound up using an old one from his office as a dumb terminal using the terminal built into ROM. I also played around in DOS on it, though I couldn't do much as I only had a couple pieces of software. One of them was the demo program that you show in your video.
AFAIK it was one of the very first PCs to use the soon ubiquitous 3.5" floppy disk. In the stack of disks you show, I see a couple of the early ones with the shutter that could latch in place.
Thanks for sharing! You’re right on the floppy drives - depending on where you look it was either the first or one of the first commercially available micros to use them
A truly interesting piece of kit. Great video as always!
Thanks mate!
Great video as always mate 👍
Thanks man
can you share the ms dos version specific to this PC Plz
Hi, you can find the disk images on archive.org
Excellent video on this cool PC
Thanks, and you’re right; it is super cool
I would REALLY love to see the special build of Windows running on one of these. Wonder how difficult it would be to implement a hard drive with modern tricks and hardware. Any thoughts?
Probably quite difficult as the expansion module is needed to convert from whatever interface the drive is to the HP-IB bus
Nice review of the HP150 and good to see that the HP Computer Museum's website was helpful in your video. Would you be able to advise the model number of the keyboard for that unit? The model number will be underneath the keyboard and will be a 4XXXXXA type number. Also, is your keyboard a US or UK english one - UK English will have a pound sign instead of a $ sign.
I will update the HP Computer Museum website with that info. We dont have a physical collection any more and have received a question on the keyboard model number. Thanks in advance - David Collins HP Computer Musuem.
Hi David, I’m sorry but I sold this system on a while back. Thank you for all you do with the HO Computer Museum though, you were essential in exploring this machines capabilities
@@TechMadeEasyUK No problem, thanks for the feedback, it's great to know people are still benefitting from the site.
From the days when HP meant quality, engineering excellence and bugger the price.
It's possible to emulate hard and floppy disk drives using a pc with a gpib card. This should allow you to try out Windows on the 150. Nice video; thank you for making it.
That's really useful information to know! I looked for a hard disk module in the usual places and they ain't cheap!
The software is called HPdrive. It works with Windows but is a bit fussy about the GPIB card. I use a Windows 200 machine with an old ISA card. It works with a lot of HP stuff.
Unpopular opinion: Win 8 was ahead if its time and a great concept. Just… poorly made.