X-no-Archive:yes
Alfredo makes some excellent points.  However, I would differ somewhat with
him on the hypothetical reload issue of MPE.  If indeed one were forced
into a reload going from MPE32 to MPE64, then one would probably have to do
an install or whatever it would be called then.  Let's call it install64.
 Then once the system was up and configured, one would do a restore of the
user files.  There might be some issues as to what is found in PUB.SYS and
the various network components, but overall, it should fairly
straightforward.  This pre-supposes there would be no OMM available.

I understand what Alfredo is alluding to about having to do a reboot after
installing each and every application.  While not completely false on
Windows NT, it does have some basis in fact.  There are indeed some
application providers that force you to do this.  We, Hicomp, are not one
of them.  You can install Hiback, run it and remove it (why anyone would
remove it is beyond me,) without ever rebooting the machine.

Be that as it may, the question is how do you reload an NT machine.  Well,
if you have an NT server (let's compare grapefruits to oranges here, at
least we are talking citrus fruits), it will most certainly have multiple
disk drives and volumes.  The OS will usually be found on the C: drive
(think LDEV 1 here, or at least MPE_XL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET).  If you lose the
C: drive to a bad disk or a corrupted NT installation, you need to restore
it.  You can prepare for this contingency by installing another version of
NT on another drive.  If the event ever occurs, slap in a floppy disk, boot
up and select the alternate installation.  Then you can restore the c:
drive from a backup and you are good to go.  The entire procedure is
detailed at www.hicomp.com/toc.htm.  We have demonstrated this many times.
 We can purge c:\winnt, reboot with the floppy, point to the NT
installation on another drive, restore the contents of c:\winnt from the
backup and run a couple of small scripts we provide and you are back in
business.  You can actually set up NT to be easier to recover from a
catastrophic disk drive failure than you can MPE.  I recommend to my NT
customers that they get RAID SCSI controllers.  They can mirror the C:
drive and other drives with ease.  AT that point you take away the
catastrophic disk failures.  NT Server does have built-in software
mirroring, but I like hardware mirrors better, and the only costs a few
thousand dollars, or less.

If you lose a drive other than the C: drive with the OS, simply do a
restore from the backup, if it's not mirrored.

There is no need to be sorry about your professed ignorance of Windows and
your usage of Macs for Internet-related things, but I was wondering why
Apple does not follow your example.  They run their web site with
Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 on SUN Solaris machines.  Do they not trust the Mac
OS?  At least Microsoft runs their web site on IIS 4.0 and Windows NT 4.0.

Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP America, Inc.
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com



-----Original Message-----
From:   F. Alfredo Rego [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Wednesday, 24 February, 1999 2:23 PM
To:     HP3000-L
Cc:     Denys Beauchemin
Subject:        Re: Inevitable migration to NT (err... Windows 2000)

Denys Beauchemin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>...if it came down to HP having
>to make the following decision:  do we force a reload to go to 64 bit or
do
>we expend considerable effort enabling an OMM, I would lean towards the
>reload.  If a migration is indeed required but an OMM is a small effort,
>then I have raised a non-issue.
>
>What does Alfredo, the originator of this thread, think about this?

A reload on an HP3000 (under MPE) is a relatively straight-forward
procedure (time consuming, but not complex).  The worst that can happen is
that, if your HPSUSAN changes, you will need to get new authorizations from
your software suppliers.  But you will not have to deal with having to
REINSTALL every application, with each application insisting on a RESTART
of your system (just to pick an example at random).

How does a reload under Windows compare to a reload under MPE?  I am the
wrong person to answer this question because my non-HP3000 experience has
been with the Macintosh platform (Mac OS software and Apple hardware),
which happily runs 32-bit PowerPC applications as well as a couple of
nostalgic decades-old 16-bit applications.  Since these Macintoshes quietly
run all of Adager's Internet-related material day in and day out, night in
and night out, with total neglect from me (web, e-mail, routing, network
printing, HP3000 terminal emulation, and so on) and have crashed only once
or twice in the last 4 years, I can't claim that I have any experience
rebuilding them or reloading them (they restart by themselves).  Sorry...
 _______________
|               |
|               |
|            r  |  Alfredo                     mailto:[log in to unmask]
|          e    |                                  http://www.adager.com
|        g      |  F. Alfredo Rego                       +1 208 726-9100
|      a        |  Manager, R & D Labs               Fax +1 208 726-2822
|    d          |  Adager Corporation
|  A            |  Sun Valley, Idaho 83353-3000                   U.S.A.
|               |
|_______________|