I know that this will sound like from stone age but I am still using couple B180L and B2600 boxes running with HP-UX 10.20 Ace5.
Recently I got perfect condition HP C8000 workstation and just wondering if I can run it with 10.20?
All specs saying min requirements are 11i, however I am sure I've seen post somewhere before that it is possible to build 10.20 on this machine. Maybe I was dreaming?
Tried to cold install 10.20 and got the following results:
Booting...
HARD Booted.
ISL Revision A.00.38 OCT 26, 1994 (oh god, that's old...)
ISL booting hpux (;0):INSTALL
Then after couple seconds screens refreshed with the following message:
ISL> S/N 113-99006-103 BIOS
and just got ISL console. Unfortunately, I am not experienced enough to benefit from ISL console...
Is it a sign that workstation is not compatible or there is a way which I am not aware of to install 10.20 on C8000?
What I see is that aC8000 is a pure 64 bit machine, and I dont remember if you had a 10.20 in 64 bits, as I always had 10.20 in 32 bit even for first 64 bits compatible box like K3XX series, then at the time of 10.20 there were no PCI slots nor could I remember of ultraSCSI the boxes had FW-SCSI2 perhaps and HSC expansion.., I would not say its impossible, but I would start by looking for the last HP 10.20 archive ( dec 2001 I think ) and look what firmware upgrades wer given, then look if any extra patches ( firware were released ) you could use to be compatible, and of course look in you can run in 32bit as it was possible with the first generations of PA8000 but here you have a PA 8800....
I am currently using B2600 box which has PA-8600 64bit processor with multiple PCI interface cards, Ultra 2 SCSI hard drive and even IDE CD-ROM and USB. I built that box using the same installation disk (ACE 5 with 1994 ISL) with no problem.
For this reason I do not want to believe it is something to do with 64bit compatibility. However, it seems these boxes using different SCSI controllers, B2600 is using Ultra 2 SCSI LVD while C8000 Ultra 320 SCSI... Might this be an issue?
10.20 will not play on the C8000.. We have tried it many times. The best workstation you are going to get to run 10.20 is the rare J7600 or J7000.. more available are the J5600 & J5000.