<<As a lab engineer in HP's Commercial Systems Division, I guess I'll
take a nervous stab at answering your fundamental question:>>
 
Frankly, I have to admire the courage of anyone willing to step into this
thread with "HP" in his/her tag line. Hope you have your asbestos
underwear on ;-)
 
<<What does "does not support" mean?>>
 
As some may have figured out, my question was pretty much rhetorical;
it's fairly clear to me what "does not support" means in this situation.
I'd phrase it something like this:
    "We (HP) have decided that it's time for you (the customer) to get
off of HPIB peripherals and onto the SCSI standard-whether you're ready
to do so or not. Of course, this is at your own, possibly considerable,
expense."
 
Of course, the "business need" behind this decision is likely due to some
of the reasons you mentioned:
   o  HP has chosen to "phase out" those particular peripherals by not
supporting them on new platforms.
   o  The Response Center / Field organization is not prepared to support
this particular mix and is under no obligation to assist you with making
this mix work.
 
Plus, the fundamental "bottom line" issue is that it is more
cost-effective for HP to only have to design, produce, and support a
single type of peripherals and interfaces. But, since they're having to
do all three for owners of other boxes, the "savings" opportunity seems
pretty minimal at the moment.
 
In addition, this "let them eat cake" approach overlooks the impact on
the customers of having to unnecessarily replace or modify their existing
HPIB peripherals in order to upgrade to the new box. As I mentioned in
the original post, it is certainly good, from a technical viewpoint, to
make the transition to SCSI if possible. And it certainly doesn't hurt HP
to have customers buy thousand/tens of thousands of dollars worth of new
SCSI peripherals.
 
As an aside, I'd be willing to bet that, at this moment, there is an
HP-owned HP-operated 9x9KS box somewhere in the world with an HPIB
interface installed and an HPIB device attached and operating.
 
One concern is that, in this case, it appears that the "incompatibility"
is purely a marketing issue. There have been situations in other
industries where large suits, individual and class-action, have been
brought over deliberate, artificial incompatibilities introduced purely
to increase revenue, and I'd hate to see something like that happen here.
I think it would be much better, from a customer-relations perspective,
for HP to invest the small amount of effort/capital needed to create the
missing software for the HPIB interface, test and certify the whole
thing, and make it a supported interface. Since we're going to use it
anyway, and we're going to call the RC when it doesn't work, HP is going
to end up spending significant dollars either way; I think they'd be
better off selecting the happier customer/fewer dollars option.
 
<<I admire your tenacious tinkering and wish you success.>>
 
Thanks. On a slightly-related topic, what does HP recommend as the
"official" system-printer solution for 9x9KS boxes? Since the base unit
has neither Centronics nor RS-232 capability (ignoring the port for the
external modem--now *there's* an opportunity for a really ugly hack!),
and HPIB is "not supported", it looks like SCSI printers are the only
option.
 
Thanks for the feedback.
 
Steve Dirickson         WestWin Consulting
(360) 598-6111  [log in to unmask]