The HP 64000, introduced circa 1980, is a tool for developing hardware and software for products based on commercial microcomputers. The earliest commercial 64000 development systems contain from one to six 64100A Development Stations sharing a hard drive and line printer. This arrangement allowed up to six designers and engineers to use their workstations together, sharing the HPIB instrumentation bus and a hard drive and a line printer. This was an innovative feature of the 64000 development system since other systems of the era used a timesharing system with a single system processor and memory, making for a more expensive and less flexible development system.

Description

The 64000 system is a complete emulation system consisting of a microprocessor emulator, a memory emulator, a logic analyzer, and a software package that interacts with the integrated hardware to form a complete development tool.

The three interfaces that comprise a 64000 system are as follows:

1. the user interface as defined by the target processor's specifications.
2. the high-speed emulation bus that connects the processor emulator, the memory emulator, and the logic analyzer.
3. the 64100A mainframe bus is used to control the emulation processor and to communicate between the mainframe processor and the emulation processor.

Examine the functional diagram of the HP 64000 system to the right which illustrates the interaction between various system components.

Microprocessor emulator

The emulation systems available consists of two subsystems, 1) an external emulation pod which contains the target microprocessor and 2) an internal expansion card called the emulation control board which controls the microprocessor in the pod and interfaces it to the system timing and control signals of the 64100A workstation.

Emulator pods

These are pods external to the 64100A and 64110 mainframe. The pod is connected to a matching control board in the card cage by 2 sometimes 3 flat cables.
It may also be connected to a target computer system's processors socket by a 40-pin plug for 8 bit processors or a 64-pin plugin for processors like the 68000 or 68010 64-pin dip socket.

The following is a list of available emulator pods for various target microprocessor systems.

Model	Remarks
64191A Emulation Probe	Motorola 6805
64202A Emulation Probe	Intel 8080 Intel 8080 The Intel 8080 was the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and was released in April 1974. It was an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibility...
64203A Emulation Probe	Intel 8085 Intel 8085 The Intel 8085 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1977. It was binary-compatible with the more-famous Intel 8080 but required less supporting hardware, thus allowing simpler and less expensive microcomputer systems to be built....
64212A Emulation Probe	Motorola 6800 Motorola 6800 The 6800 was an 8-bit microprocessor designed and first manufactured by Motorola in 1974. The MC6800 microprocessor was part of the M6800 Microcomputer System that also included serial and parallel interface ICs, RAM, ROM and other support chips...
64213A Emulation Probe	Motorola 6802
64215A Emulation Probe	Motorola 6809 Motorola 6809 The Motorola 6809 is an 8-bit microprocessor CPU from Motorola, designed by Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced 1978...
64223A Emulation Probe	Intel 8086 Intel 8086 The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978, when it was released. The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture of Intel's future processors...
64224A Emulation Probe	Intel 80186 Intel 80186 The 80188 is a version with an 8-bit external data bus, instead of 16-bit. This makes it less expensive to connect to peripherals. The 80188 is otherwise very similar to the 80186. It has a throughput of 1 million instructions per second....
64226A Emulation Probe	Intel 8088 Intel 8088 The Intel 8088 microprocessor was a variant of the Intel 8086 and was introduced on July 1, 1979. It had an 8-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and the one megabyte address range were unchanged, however...
64242A Emulation Probe	Motorola 68000 Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor...
64252A Emulation Probe	Zilog Z80 Zilog Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes...
64256A Emulation Probe	Motorola 6801/6803

Emulator control board

The control board which controls the interface to the pods is installed in the 64100A internal card cage. This emulator control board consists of:

• a timing section which converts the target CPU's timing signals to those compatible with the 64100A bus.
• assorted status and control registers
• 256 bytes of memory called background memory.
• a state machine called the background controller.
• an illegal opcode detector

The following table of available controller boards lists various target architectures for particular controllers. Given the generalized design features of the 64000 system, some controller boards are compatible with more than one microprocessor family.

Model	Remarks
64201A Controller Board	for Intel 8080 Intel 8080 The Intel 8080 was the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and was released in April 1974. It was an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibility... , Intel 8085 Intel 8085 The Intel 8085 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1977. It was binary-compatible with the more-famous Intel 8080 but required less supporting hardware, thus allowing simpler and less expensive microcomputer systems to be built....  pods
64211A Controller Board	for Motorola 6800 Motorola 6800 The 6800 was an 8-bit microprocessor designed and first manufactured by Motorola in 1974. The MC6800 microprocessor was part of the M6800 Microcomputer System that also included serial and parallel interface ICs, RAM, ROM and other support chips... , Motorola 6802 pods
64243A Controller Board	for Motorola 68000 Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor... , pods
64251A Controller Board	for Zilog Z80 Zilog Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes...  pods
64271A Controller Board	for Motorola 68000 Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor... , Intel 8088 Intel 8088 The Intel 8088 microprocessor was a variant of the Intel 8086 and was introduced on July 1, 1979. It had an 8-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and the one megabyte address range were unchanged, however... , Intel 8086 Intel 8086 The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978, when it was released. The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture of Intel's future processors... pods

Other expansion cards

The 64100A can support other expansion cards to aid in emulation or in prototyping.

Model	Remarks
64151A 64K Byte Emulator Memory Board	static 8-bit memory card
64152A 32K Byte Emulator Memory Board	static 8-bit memory card
64153A 16K Byte Emulator Memory Board	static 8-bit memory card
64154A 8K Byte Emulator Memory Board	static 8-bit memory card
64161A 128K Byte Emulator Memory Board	static 16-bit memory card
64162A 64K Byte Emulator Memory Board	static 16-bit memory card
64300A Real-Time Logic Analyzer Board	provides system-controlled logic analyzer
64500A PROM Programmer	provides prom programmer
64502A PROM Module	programmer for Intel 2716 TI TMS2516, TMS2532
64504A PROM Module	programmer for Harris HM7608,HM7640/41,HM7640/41 AR,HM7980/81HM7980/81 R,HM7980/81 P,HM7980/81 RP chips
64505A PROM Module	programmer for Signetics 82S140/141,82S1801/81,82S190/191,82S2708 chips
64601A Timing Analysis Probe	State and timing probe

External links

• PDF documentation for HP 64000 from Bitsavers
• first 64000 system from HP Computer Museum