Hewlett-Packard Apollo 715
I have two main units and keyboard.
type computer
country USA
year 1992
os HP Unix
cpu PA-RISC 7100
speed 33 MHz
ram 8 MB
hd none
graphic 1280×1024
colors 256
sound yes
ports keyboard, two serial, speaker, Ethernet (AUI), VGA, Centronigs, SCSI, Modem/phone
The HP Apollo 715 — The Engineering Unix Workstation
The HP Apollo 9000 Series 700 Model 715, released in 1992 with the Apollo branding that reflected HP’s 1989 acquisition of Apollo Computer, was a professional PA-RISC Unix workstation designed for engineering, CAD/CAM, and technical computing applications. Using HP’s PA-7100 RISC processor, the 715 competed directly against Sun Microsystems SPARC workstations, DEC Alpha systems, Silicon Graphics MIPS-based machines, and IBM’s RS/6000 in the highly competitive Unix workstation market of the early 1990s.
The Apollo Acquisition
The ”Apollo” branding on the 715 reflected HP’s significant 1989 acquisition of Apollo Computer for $476 million — at the time one of the largest acquisitions in the technology industry. Apollo had been one of the pioneers of the Unix workstation market, competing with Sun Microsystems throughout the 1980s and developing the influential Domain/OS operating system and NFS network file system concepts. HP’s acquisition brought Apollo’s engineering talent and customer relationships into its PA-RISC workstation business, and the Apollo brand was retained on certain HP 9000 products for several years after the acquisition.
PA-RISC Architecture
HP’s Precision Architecture RISC (PA-RISC) processor was one of the major RISC architectures of the 1990s, competing with Sun’s SPARC, MIPS, DEC’s Alpha, and IBM’s POWER in the workstation and server markets. The PA-7100 processor used in the early 715 models delivered solid performance for the CAD, simulation, and technical computing applications that drove workstation sales. HP-UX — HP’s Unix variant — provided a stable, professional operating system environment with support for the major CAD and engineering software packages of the era.
Legacy
The HP 9000 715 series was popular in engineering firms, universities, and research institutions throughout the 1990s. It represents the era when Unix workstations dominated technical computing — before the combination of Linux and increasingly powerful PC hardware made Unix workstations commercially unviable for most applications in the early 2000s.