HP / Keysight / Agilent 9836C Overview
Marks Simms reports:
The system HP that was sold as the first 32-bit microcomputer was the 9020. It was based on HP's proprietary processor architecture. The 9020 was a desktop system, but was much larger than the 9836 and had only one floppy drive. It only ran HP-UX. After these products had been launched, HP decided to give the HP 9000 name to all its technical computers and the 9836 became the HP 9000 model 236 and the 9020 became the HP 9000 model 520. Add the series 300, 700 and 800 and the term HP 9000 becomes almost meaningless.
The Series 200 included the HP-9816, HP-9826, HP-9836, and HP-9836C. The HP-9836 was mainly used for CAE applications, and high-technology (of that time !) in general.
Alan Barrow reports :
The 9020 was HP's 32 bit workstation prior to the switch to motorola processors. The 9020 started like the 9836 as basic, but was quickly refocused to HP-UX. It then became the 9000 Series 500. The later 9030 and 9050 offered more expansion and utilized CIO bus cards later used in the first S800's.
The Series 500 was a true multi user unix environment and was used both in workstation and mini-computer type environment. One more family note: some of the S200's unix executables would work on the Integral in character mode as well. In fact, they would also work on the S300's in 16 bit mode, I believe. HP did a good job of trying to maintain compatability via standards.