Gentle Listers,
 
Please forgive me for interrupting.  Sometime back (a couple of days), there
was a thread about the feasability of getting MPE on a small, portable
platform.  As is common, the thread diverged from the initial intent.  I
would like to take just a few seconds of your time and share with you some of
my thoughts.
 
1- Why do I want a portable HP3000?
Well, it is for the best reason, I am selfish.  I would like to have such a
portable HP3000 because I travel a lot and I give numerous demos and would
love to be able to show things on the HP3000 without having to hunt down a
connection to a 3000.  Even when I find the connection, sometimes the OS
version is wrong or the loaded software is not what I expect or. . .
 
2- What do I have now?
Currently I have an HP3000, a 922LX with 48 megs/main, and 2 gigs of disc
space.  It sports one console and no DTC.  The LANIC is connected to my
office LAN which has a number of Win 95 PCs & notebooks and an old
HP9000/300.  Once the HP3000 is up, the console is hardly ever used, only for
replies and shutdowns.  All the access to the HP3000 is through the LAN
either with IMAGE/SQL or with Reflection.  I develop stuff on the HP3000 in
multiple windows and everything is fine.  We use the HP3000's DAT to effect
the backup for our PCs with HIBACK. Everything is scheduled through Windows
95's system agent.
 
When I leave the office, my notebook has all the connectivity required to
access an HP3000.  It has Reflection, TCP/IP, LAN cards, ODBC drivers,
HIBACK, etc. . .  One thing it does not have is, MPE.
 
3- What do I want, and what is possible?
Now when I 'ordered' my protable MPE platform last year at SIGSOFTVEND, I
only meant that I wanted an MPE server.  All I ask of the portable MPE
platform, is that it can boot up MPE and live on a LAN.  The display does not
have to be anything fancy it should act like a hardwired ldev 20.  As long as
this MPE notebook attaches to a LAN, that is all most everyone would need.
 Notebooks can now be had with 32-64 megs of memory and this is growing.  You
can now have a 1.6 gig disc in your notebook and this too is growing.
 
The current crop of CPU is now approaching 200mhz and is expected to pass
this mark very shortly.  Pinnacle Micro offers an 4.6gb Optical disc drive
which performs at the speed of a hard disc.  Later this year, USB (Universal
Serial Bus) supporting up to 127 devices at 12mbps will become part of the
offering of PCs.  Towards the end of the year, FireWire will start the
assault on SCSI.  FireWire supports 63 devices at 100Mbps.
 
At this rapid rate of evolution, the near future (now -> 18 months) will
bring us some truly awesome PCs and notebooks.  Beyond that, it is just too
difficult, for me at least, to formulate a clear vision of the impact of
technology, it is just too fast.  But I do see (hear) speech-recognition
becoming very prevalent, almost pervasive.  Everyone will run around with
headsets!
 
Already some folks are running Windows NT on notebooks and as the Win 95
interface is released for NT, look for more NT on notebooks.  About the only
hurdle will be PC-CARD support on NT.
 
All this to say that, resource-wise, there should be no reason not to have
MPE on a notebook.  The problems of device attachement could be solved with
FireWire, but that is just a guess.
 
4- Where are we now?
Sometime soon, the HP/Intel alliance is supposed to release a chip as was
discussed earlier in this forum.  There is a distinct possibility that MPE
may not find itslef on that platform.  If it does not, I suspect my dreams of
an MPE notebook shall be dashed!  If MPE does migrate to this chip, then I
submit that there should be no technical reason why we could not have an MPE
notebook!
 
Now HP, can I have a confirmation on my order, with an estimated delivery
date?
 
Just dreaming, I should wake up now!
 
 
Kind regards,
 
Denys. . .