The Team
Jack Walden, one of the fathers of the HP 9845 series, is dead. He passed away at his home in Loveland, Colorado, on Nov. 23, 2008 with the age of 86. Jack Walden had been responsible for software development of the HP 9830 and later for the 9845. His engineering skills and experience had been one of the main success factors for the whole original 9845 project.
After retiring in 1988, he still had his interests in computers, as well as in ham radio operating and music. Unfortunately, we did not get into contact before his decease.
The core development for the System 45 product line had two major stages. The first was the development of the 9845A, where most of the design decisions and implementations for the whole product line were performed. The second major step then was the development of the color graphics system for the 9845C.
The 9845B was more or less an improved replacement of the previous 9845A with a better memory address extension and a couple of firmware enhancements, and even the 9845C mainframe was for estimated 98% still a 9845B (or, more precise, 9845T). But it was the 98770A color display which made a 9845B a 9845C. And the 98770A was much more than just a display, in fact in was a self-contained computing system with own bit-slice processor, firmware, graphics subsystem, power supply, CRT and communication interface to the mainframe.
There is not much known about the whole development process, how it started, how it was planned and how it was controlled, but it seems that most of the responsibility for the 9845A development was at Jack Walden and Bill Eads, and most of the responsibility for the 9845C project at Bill Hale and John Frost.
And not much is known how the subsequent production, marketing and support was organized, until the product line was ended in 1984.
The list below is derived mainly from the HP Journal references. Since there have been a lot of activities around other products like the 9825 and the 9835 which had a strong influence on the 9845 design, this list is far from being complete. It would be great to receive some information and comments from one of the engineers who were involved in the design and development process.
9845A Development
Project Management
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Jack Walden, group leader and project manager software development, patent co-owner for 9845A. |
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Bill Eads, language development manager and involved in the modified processor chips, patent co-owner for 9845A |
LPU Firmware Design
| John Bidwell | Internal program form, patent co-owner for 9845A | |
| Dave Landers | String variable code | |
| Jeff Eastman | PPU/LPU communications and I/O statement execution | |
| Jeff Osborne | PPU/LPU communications and I/O statement execution | |
| Jack Cooley | Subprogram and tracing capabilities | |
| John Schmidt | Math and matrix packages |
PPU Firmware Design
| Gene Burmeister | Mass storage system | |
| Frank Cada | I/O scheduler and process control | |
| Ken Heun | Tape cartridge drives and PRINT/PRINT USING statements | |
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Bob Jewett | Display and keyboard procedures, graphics option, patent co-owner for 9845A |
| J. L. Marsh | External storage device drivers | |
| Leo Miller | Incremental plotter interface drivers |
I/O ROM Design
| John Balza | Project manager (who was also on the TACO chip) | |
| Dan Michaels | I/O ROM engineer | |
| Wolfgang Kappler | I/O ROM engineer | |
| Tim Mikkelsen | I/O ROM engineer |
Product Design
| John Keith | Project manager 9845A mainframe hardware | |
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Dick Barney | Project manager CRT display, power supply and keyboard |
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Ansel Vogen | Lead engineer alphanumeric display and transfer to production |
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Louis Schulte | Graphics hardware design and lead engineer 9845A production engineering, patent co-owner for 9845A |
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Ray Cozzens | Section manager for IC and thinfilm production engineering, general product design, patent co-owner for 9845A |
| Bob Brooks | Lead engineer product design | |
| Steve Anderson | Industrial design | |
| LeRoy LaCelle | 9845A casing, patent owner for 9845A casing design | |
| Marl Godfrey | Lead engineer testing and quality assurance | |
| Mike Berry | Mike worked for Marl Godfrey on QWERT environmental testing. He later went on to be lead engineer on the IMAGE/45 project and also did the structured programming ROM. | |
| Brent DeWitt | Design engineer in charge of the keyboard, all language variants, and alphanumeric display electronics (character generator). Brent drove the selection of the magnetic core based keyboard switches from IWT for their long cycle lifetime. | |
| Lee A. White | Overall mechanical printer design (including the paper feed and tracking system and the drive motor and cog belt drive system, as well as integration of the printer and the CRT display into the calculator itself), thermal design | |
| Fred Richart | Testing and quality assurance | |
| Scott Bennett | Dual port memory controller (DPMC) and I/O bus and testing | |
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Dan Griffin | Memory address extension (MAE), revised ROM and ROM hybrid, patent co-owner for 9845A |
| Gerald Reynolds | Processor board, motherboard and tape electronics | |
| Ray Kloess | Power supply (PSU) | |
| Dave Aldridge | Power supply (PSU) | |
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Dyke Shaffer | Dyke wrote tools for NMOS II DRC of layout artwork with capacitance and netlist extraction, modified BPC hybrid substrate to add AEC with its additional 16 address signals, designed and built the second generation BPC hybrid tester used in production |
| Ken Eldredge | Modified processor chips and tape controller (TACO) chip | |
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Dennis Peery | Modified processor chips |
| Paul Stoecker | Modified processor chips | |
| Dave Uhlrich | Modified processor chips | |
| Bill Thayer | Modified processor chips and tape controller (TACO) chip | |
| Rob Beeson | CRT display and latching mechanism | |
| Hudson Grotzinger | Modular power supply and modular keyboard | |
| Walt Perdue | Tape transport mounting and ROM drawers | |
| Lowell Kolb | CRT monitor circuits | |
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Fred Porter | CRT display control logic circuits |
| Richard Kochis | Tape controller (TACO) chip | |
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Craig Mortensen | Tape controller (TACO) chip |
| John Balza | Tape controller (TACO) chip | |
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Eugene Zeller | Thin film process deveopment for the thermal printer |
| Marty Wilson | Lead engineer printhead architecture, patent co-owner for 9845A | |
| Wally Wahlen | Printhead driver chip design and temperature control electronics | |
| Charlie Rock | Printer and ROM drawer keying, 9845B power supply | |
| Bob Kuseski | Printer control electronics and related software, patent co-owner for 9845A | |
| Dave Conner | Paper advance motor characteristics and head protection scheme optimizations | |
| Dale Harlan | Paper feeding and tracking mechanism |
Components Engineering
| Fred Mann | Manager component engineering | |
| Bob Myers | Materials engineer | |
| David Dahms | Materials engineer | |
| Martin Speer | Materials engineer | |
| Steve Chorak | Materials engineer | |
| Dan Swanson | Materials engineer | |
| Tim McCarthy | Materials engineer |
9845C Color Display System Design
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Bill Hale | Project manager 9845C color display |
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John "Jack" Frost | Project manager 9845C firmware & light pen |
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Clark Bruderer | Lead production engineer for the 9845C |
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Colin Cantwell | User interface, area fill algorithms and integration of key resources within the graphics firmware as a part time consultant. Colin also had probably been responsible for the 9845C demo (besides his work on the Star Wars movie and later Wargames). |
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Dick Barney | Support in establishing project definition |
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Warren Pratt | Technical hardware design, inclduing the design of the video deflection and convergence circuits |
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Bob Jewett | Firmware and graphics ROMs for the 9845A, 9845B and 9845C computers |
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Bob Fredrickson | Graphics input and light pen support firmware for the 9845C, including firmware tracking algorithm and interrupt service routine |
| Ken Lewis | Quality assurance 9845C firmware ROMs | |
| Ron Tolley | Quality assurance 9845C firmware ROMs | |
| Yuan Bui | Quality assurance 9845C firmware ROMs | |
| Alan Ward | Quality assurance 9845C firmware ROMs | |
| Dave Hodge | Quality assurance 9845C firmware ROMs | |
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Fred Porter | Light pen control logic |
| Kevin Allen | Light pen mechanical system | |
| Chuck Bain | Industrial design, including human factors and the initial mechanical design | |
| Lowell Kolb | Assistance for the design and testing of detection circuitry in the light pen | |
| Nick Mati | Optical path development, detection circuitry and mechanical design | |
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Harry Baeverstad, Jr. | Design engineer for the 9845C graphics memory and alpha controller |
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J. Steven Becker | 9845C display power supply (PSU) design and production leader for analog circuitry in the display |
| Mike Ramsay | Support for the 9845C display wideband vertical deflection circuitry | |
| Virgil Schuetz | 9845C display deflection and convergence design evaluation |
Supporters
| Ed Olander | Definition and management of the System 45 development | |
| Chuck Near | Definition and management of the System 45 development | |
| Frans Laverman | HP's European manufacturing facility, product design | |
| Paul Kirby | 9845C display system design |
Please note: All of the above information is from publically available sources. However I'm not a friend of violating privacy, so if you feel you're better not included in the list, please let me know and I'll immediately take you off the list.