HP 9000/A180
Overview
Project names:
- A180: Staccato
- A180C: Staccato
Introduced: September 1998
Discontinued: February 2001
The PA-7300LC based A180 and A180C were one of the latest PA1.1-powered
HP 9000 servers. They are quite small and also rack-mountable. Designated
as Enterprise Internet Servers
they do not offer any video output,
only serial console or a Secure Web Console.
Internals
CPU
- A180: PA-7300LC 180MHz with 64/64KB on-chip I/D L1 cache
- A180C: PA-7300LC 180MHz with 64/64KB on-chip I/D L1 and 1MB off-chip unified L2 cache
The additional 1MB L2 cache is the only difference between both systems.
This cache is
upgradeable through two DIMM slots near the CPU.
Chipset
- LASI ASIC, which features:
- NCR 53C710 8-bit single-ended SCSI-2
- Intel 82596CA 10Mb Ethernet controller
- NS 16550A compatible serial
- Dino GSC-to-PCI bridge
- Phantom PseudoBC GSC+ port
- DEC 21142/43 10/100BaseT PCI Ethernet
» View a system-level ASCII-illustration of the chipset.
Buses
- GSC+ general system-level I/O bus (probably clocked at 36MHz — 144MB/s peak data rate)
- PCI high performance device I/O bus
- SCSI-2 Fast-Narrow single-ended; main storage I/O bus
Memory
- 72-pin ECC EDO SIMMs, 60ns or faster.
- Takes 64-256MB modules
- Eight slots
- 128MB (2×64) minimum, 2048MB (8×256) maximum
Expansion
- Two slots for either GSC (EISA formfactor) or PCI cards
- See GSC expansion-cards
Drives
- One tray for two 3.5″ Fast-Narrow 50-pin SCSI hard drives
External Connectors
- 50-pin HD SCSI-2 single-ended
- DB9 male RS232C serial
- TP/RJ45 10/100Mbit Ethernet
- TP/RJ45 10Mbit Ethernet
Web Console
References:
- A180 User’s Manual (PDF, 0.9MB)
ROM update
There is a firmware update available for the A180[C], which contains the latest version (39.32).
- PF_CSTD3932.txt has details about the contents and installation of the patch.
- PF_CSTD3932 contains the patch.
Operating Systems
- HP-UX: every 32-bit release from 10.20-11.11 works.
- Linux: works fine.
- OpenBSD: works fine.
- NetBSD: experimental support as of 5/2005.
Benchmarks
| Model | SPEC95, int | SPEC95, fp |
|---|---|---|
| A180 | ? | ? |
| A180C | 9.22 | 8.60 |
Compare these with other results on the Benchmarks page.