Hello Friends:

Wilson Wong asked if Instant Information, the new CD set for MPE/iX 6.0,
included everything in the old LaserROM CDs. Alas, no. For the time being,
complete, electronic HP documentation involves using three separate
resources: HP's new documentation Web site, Instant Information and
LaserROM. Paper, if you can get it, still has every manual. I'll share a
report on this we sent to our paid 3000 NewsWire subscribers, one which
locates a useful table on the HP Web site that lets you discover where the
manuals have migrated to.

<plug>
There's a lot of HP to keep track of these days -- and keeping you up to
date on changes in fundamentals is one thing the NewsWire does for 3000
customers. Even if the platform doesn't seem to be changing much, HP is
most definitely changing the way you interact with it. Knowing where to
find the answer at HP takes less time if you subscribe to the 3000
NewsWire. Browse to our Web site at
http://www.3000newswire.com/newswire/wiresub.html and get signed on for a
trial subscription to see what we mean.
</plug>

Still multiple sources to search for all 3000 documentation

        Customers are raving over the improvement to the CD-ROM based
documentation in HP Instant Information, shipped with the new MPE/iX 6.0
operating system. (See our First Look review in the November FlashPaper)
Even if you don't intend to install 6.0 anytime soon, you can enjoy the CD
sent with the push release. It's a great addition to the new Web-based
documentation site for HP 3000 manuals (http://docs.hp.com/mpeix/). And of
course, the paper manuals are still out there if you can't read docs from a
screen.

        However, HP 3000 managers are noting there are still manuals not
available in every format, and that no one format is considered a
comprehensive one yet -- except paper. Some manuals haven't made the
transition from the old LaserROM documentation service, and probably won't.
For example, the MPE/iX HP 3000 Series 99X Software Startup Manual, or the
Openview DTC Technical Reference Manual aren't available in any electronic
format -- like most HP manuals more than three years old, for the most
part. Other documents remain on paper and on the Web, but have never made
it into a HP CD, like the ODBCLINK/SE Reference Manual. And still others
aren't available on the Instant Information CD, but have a place on the old
LaserROM CD, like the HP Symbolic Debugger/iX User's Guide. These last
kinds of manuals appear on the HP Web site -- so a good rule of thumb is
that if it's in the Instant Information CD, it's on the HP Web site.

        HP publishes a guide to finding the source and part number for any
HP 3000 manual product, an appendix in the 6.0 Communicator that was
shipped with the 6.0 release. It lists a table for all the manuals, their
ordering numbers and whether they are on LaserROM, Instant Information, or
the Web (or in multiple sources.) And you can look up this table on the HP
Web site, too at
http://docs.hp.com:80/dynaweb/smpe/b1015/b975/@Generic__BookTextView/19859

        For the time being, HP hasn't announced any plans to drop any of
its documentation mediums for the HP 3000. Customers at the recent
Strategic Customer Forums reminded HP that there are times when going
online isn't possible (due to firewalls and limited Internet access) to
read a manual.

        The Web site remains one of the most useful compendiums of HP
documentation, however. One customer found that while debugging a Posix
problem , C programs apparently do an implicit HPCIGETVAR at startup for
the variables HP_PASCAL_MINIMUM_HEAP_BLOCK and HP_PASCAL_HEAP_DUMP. These
variables aren't mentioned anywhere in the HP ESC Technical  Knowledge Base.

        These variables ARE documented in the 5.5 Communicator from 1996,
in the article on Pascal/iX Run-time Library Heap Changes. That's a
document you might only be able to read on the Web, unless you're a real
pack-rat about keeping Communicators. HP's James Overman notes that "The
Heap is created and controlled by the Pascal Run-time intrinsics, which are
invoked by the C language (which then performs its own sub-heap
management). The CI VARs were added for some performance tweaking of
customer applications and for Heap problem analysis, respectively."


Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief
The 3000 NewsWire
Independent Information to Maximize Your HP 3000
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512.331.0075