300 Series Selection:

The 300 Series was a fully-modular family of technical computers. All components came in separate boxes with separate power supplies. These components included: system units, disc drives, tape drives, monitors, input and output devices. The industrial design of the the 300 series was very functional and very elegant, and has not been appreciably improved upon to this day. Although functional and aesthetic winners, these products do not make ideal museum displays because they all look the same (many of the system units are not even differentiated by a different part or model identifier on the front of the machine). The 300 Series was based on the Motorola 680X0 family of CPUs beginning with the model 310 sporting a 68010. The primary operating environment of 300 Series computers was HP-UX. Many languages were offered including BASIC, Pascal, HPL, C and FORTRAN. Bundled versions of the Series 300 were available based on the graphics configuration of particular machines. The bundled options were: entry level monochrome (M), high-performance monochrome (MH), mid-range color (C+), high-performance color (CH), Accelerated color (CHX), entry-level 3D (SRX) and high-performance 3D (TurboSRX).

These products (excluding the 50960) were developed and manufactured at HP's Fort Collins Division. From the beginning (1972), HP's technical desktop computers had sold better internationally than in America. By the end of the 1980s, international sales were twice the level of domestic sales.

The museum has a collection of software available for download for these computers. Click here for the software listing.