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February 2004

Trivia Contest for Old-Time HP Users

By Bob Green

How much do you know about the HP 3000? Test your knowledge with this Trivia Quiz from 1985.
1. Whose garage did Hewlett-Packard start in?
2. What was the main problem with Look-Ahead Seeks?
3. What colors did the original HP 3000 come in?
4. In the game Adventure, what happens when you release the bird with the snake?
5. Give the later product names of database.utility, LARC Editor, Dollar Flow, and IMACS.
6. On what US network TV show did HP run their first commercials?
7. Who co-invented the HP 2000 Time Share Basic, co-founded Tandem Computers, and rewrote the original SORT intrinsics to make them faster?
8. Who was the first president of the HP 3000 Users Group?
9. What language was used to produce COBOL II, VIEW, the CS intrinsics, and IDS Form, but was never released to users?
10. How did HP change the stack in the Athena MIT, causing numerous user programs to fail?
11. Who wrote the TRACE/3000 symbolic debugger, now obsolete?
12. What were memory locations 8 through 11 reserved but never used for?
13. What HP products started life under the code names Amego, Grizzly, Linus, Calypso, Shadow, Lynx, Bonzai, and Gemini?
14. What popular TV/radio personality from the Bay Area hosted HP’s 1981 satellite TV show that announced the Series 64?
15. What was the function of RSAM, a software tool developed in Brazil by an SE named Robert Strand, and what became of it?
16. What company made the 47-megabyte disc drive?
17. What facility hosted the 1977 North American users group meeting?
18. Where was the 1979 North American users group meeting held?
19. What does the “F” stand for in F. Alfredo Rego?
20. What resulted in Marc Hoff eating an MIT tape?
21. What is Wendell Henry most famous for?
22. What does the photograph below show?

Bonus Trivia Quiz

By Eugene Volokh

Here are trivia questions that Eugene Volokh of Vesoft created in 1987 and 1988:

1. What are the full names of the editor commands A, E, I, O, U?
2. What HP screen-handling product preceded V/3000 (aka VIEW, VPLUS)?
3. What government post did Dave Packard hold?
4. What is the full name of HP Steak Sauce?
5. What was the distinguishing feature of the HP 2641 terminal?
6. What does the HP 150 output when you type “ESC & a ?”?
7. What happens when you hit control-DISPLAY FUNCTIONS on an HP 2645A terminal?
8. What are the only unprintable characters that DISPLAY FUNCTIONS mode does not display [in original HP terminals]?

Check your responses against the answers.

If you want more HP 3000 trivia questions, Eugene’s trivia quizzes are posted at www.adager.com/VeSoft/HpHumor.html