On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 11:43 AM, Ron Seybold <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Hello Friends,
>
> I am glad to see Mark report on his installations for his client, a major
> airline transaction processor. I have heard from more than one 3000
> community member about new installations of HP 3000s. So new installs are a
> non-zero number. (Oh, and to explain, a K-Class 3000 is a Series 9xx system.
> The same kind that sell for $1,800 in their very smallest size, more than a
> decade after HP introduced them.)


From HP's business perspective, what is the NET number of installs?  To what
extent does this affect HP's bottom line?

At this stage of the 3000's life, these numbers are not what matters
> anymore, although they are a very easy metric to count.


What is this easy method of counting?  Does include the ability to count
retired HP3000s?


> I'll have more to say about this on our blog today, but it's too early to
> tote up the HP 3000's platform value. In case you haven't noticed, the
> world's economy experienced a reboot over the past 30 days, and people are
> revising their assessments concerning computers. HP has not sold an HP 3000
> for five years, as of this Friday. The number of new systems is of far less
> importance than the number of old experts. From the looks of the traffic on
> this newsgroup/list, that group is retaining its critical mass.


Importance and critical mass for what?


> Speedware has been making a business out of employing HP 3000 experts for
> several years. Next month in our printed issue I've got interviews with a
> few new one-man support suppliers, serving companies of all sizes, and
> Adager tells me they encounter new vendors like this while Adager works with
> its customers. Jim's success in learning new technologies is a good one
> which will have value to a 3000 installation, should HP really keep a
> promise to sell an emulator license for MPE -- and some company release an
> emulator.


A good emulator is QEMM.  Some work years ago was done to add PA-RISC to
it.  AFAIK, the work stalled and died.  One could go with a commercially
produced emulator, but you would have another master to that you would have
to answer to.

With a working emulator, you have a mountain of hardware driver code that is
growing old and obsolete and little hope of keeping up with the new hardware
continuously being redesigned and brand new devices.  Without driver support
of these new hardware marvels, what possible business case can you make for
MPE?

HP will not be doing anything more to support the 3000 with anything new,
> starting in 2009 -- with the exception of what OpenMPE can wrest in promises
> for intellectual property use of MPE/iX. That's what happens when you shut
> down your development labs. The lights go out on HP's 3000 creativity at the
> end of this year. "What's new lately" is a question which HP answered for
> the last time in the summer of 2007, when the SCSI pass through driver was
> released.
>
> Not to hijack this thread, but has anyone experienced the value of that
> SCSI engineering? Craig Fairchild of HP said last summer that using this
> final gift "is not for the faint of heart." The experts on this list have
> shown very strong hearts, older yes, but still true.


This is all old technology that is just now being added to MPE.  Not many on
this list knows what a SCSI tag queue, or any SCSI internal, is without
looking up.  In solving business IT problems, no one should have to know.
As much as I like playing with OS internals, it is a big distraction to the
solving of business problems.  In my experience, mixing of techincal code
with business applications is a very bad thing for many reasons.

Best to all, and tell us what you're doing with your 3000,


That sounds like encouragement to "play the fiddle while Rome burns".

Peter

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