> Any volunteers?  I'll be delighted to feature HP3000 success stories on
the back cover of Interact magazine as my way of putting my money
where my mouth is.

I'd like to submit my favorite HP3000 story, as long as folks are in a
war-story hearing mood.  This happened about 1980.  I was finishing up
my senior year in college and working at a fairly large computer center
for a hi-tech manufacturing company.  I was an "I-O Operator" which
meant that I fed the IBM mainframe (a 3090 model, as I recall) reel-to-reel
tapes, swapped disc packs, and loaded forms on the printer.  We also
had an Amdahl V-6, a couple of DEC PDPs, and -- stuck way back in the
corner where they wouldn't be confused with the "real" computers --
four HP3000s (series II's or III's, I recall).  The I-O Operators supported all
the machines except the HP3000s.  I recognized them because my little
"backwater" college had the same kind of computer.

During less busy times, I'd wander around the room looking at all the
equipment, ask questions, and try to soak in as much as I could.  I was
friends with the operator who was responsible for the HP3ks.  He said
he had the greatest job in the computer room because he had hardly
anything to do (meaning that the systems never aborted or gave him
trouble) and could study for night-school while on his shift.

One day, I remember it well!, we were having some nasty weather.
About 11:30 in the morning, the unthinkable happened: the lights in the
computer room flickered.  The two big iron systems and the two DECs
went down -- hard.  We had all the console operators, the shift
supervisor, and the V.P. for Computer Services all huddled around the
master console.  As us peon operators scrambled to reply to the system
requests for logging tapes and all the rest, we joked among ourselves
that one hand-grenade next to the master console at this time would
eliminate two thirds of the brains of the company!  I seem to remember
that there were quite a few well-chosen oaths reserved for the quality of
the power-conditioning equipment -- which was supposed to be the best
available.

It was looking pretty grim for the big iron.  I don't recall how long it took to
get the big systems up except that it took most of the rest of the
afternoon.  However, I do remember the HP3000 operator walking out to
lunch asking us what was going on.  I replied that all the systems were
down; didn't he see the lights flicker?  He stopped, blanched, and ran
back to the HP3000 corner.  Then he came back and said that all of his
systems were up and running and **none of them had even registered a
power drop.**

Two years later I was working for my alma mater as the System Manager
for our HP3000 system.  By that time I'd learned how well an HP3000
recovers from power outages.  I even learned how the HP3000 would
detect a power brown-out, beep a message on the console, resume its
work, and none of the users would ever know there'd been a problem.
But indelibly marked in my memory was the picture of a room full of the
most sophisticated computing power commercially available absolutely
dead because of a slight power sag and those four quiet HP3000s in the
corner still humming.  And I remember thinking, "What is this HP3000 that
even the *power supply* is better than the big mainframe??"

My loyalty to the HP3000 family was sealed on that day.