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HP X-Terminals


HP X-Terminals are a line of X terminals from Hewlett Packard introduced in the early- to mid-1990s, including the 700/X and 700/RX, Envizex and Entria, and the Envizex II and Entria II. They were often sold alongside PA-RISC-based HP 9000 Unix systems. The primary use case was connecting several graphical consoles to a single server or workstation to allow multiple users access the same (expensive) processing system from (less expensive) terminal systems. These X-Terminals all allowed high-resolution, color-graphics access to the main server from which they downloaded their operating system and necessary program files. All models featured limited expandability, in most cases additional I/O options for peripherals and memory for more programs or local storage. HP did not use its own PA-RISC platform for these systems, the first design used an Intel CISC processor, while all later systems used RISC platforms, first Intel i960 and later the popular MIPS.

These 1990s X-Terminals, together with offerings from many other vendors from that time, were precursors to thin computing: the use of small dumb front-end systems for I/O and a larger processing system as back-end, shared by many concurrent users.

These were the first X-Terminals HP produced, featuring a similar case to that of some HP 9000/300 (Motorola 68000-based) workstations. They were driven by a pretty obscure CPU combination, an Intel 186 with a TI DSP as video coprocessor.

These are the direct successors to the 700/X line of X-Terminals and changed the architecture significantly. They were the first in a line of terminals to be driven by an Intel i960 RISC CPU and introduced a case which also was used on later systems. They have a (albeit very quiet) fan.

Several submodels were available, featuring different video-options:

All models have these base features in common:


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