McNealy was among the candidates interviewed for the position, he said, in a contest that ultimately went to Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay.

"I was asked to come interview, and I told them I would do the job if they couldn't find a suitable candidate," McNealy said Wednesday in an interview at his home in Silicon Valley.

"Their office is three miles from my house. I know the business, I have an army of Sun people who would have come helped me," he said.

Running HP wasn't something he was necessarily keen to do, however.

"I'd given up a very good job six years earlier," McNealy said, referring to his departure as CEO of Sun Microsystems in 2006. But he would have accepted the job, partly out of "a sense of loyalty to the Valley," he said.