my 2 cents...

> What developers need are 1-2 user boxes.
i think mpe already has the capability of a 2 user license (swcap.(24:4)=1).
hp just doesn't market it that way.  what's really needed is a low-cost 4
user license (which i don't think mpe has the capabilty of right now).  that
way, you can have the console logged in and upto 3 vt sessions into the
machine.  perfect for demo or development.

> A few months ago, I did kind of a clunky prototype
> of a transportable HP 3000 and Stan Sieler
> put it on their Web site.
portability is relative.  you can bolt a large handle to a series 70 and
call it portable  (if you have a forklift), but the lx models are already
reasonably portable (for short distance transport).  a little bigger and
heavier than a tower style netserver.  unplug it, toss it in your front seat
or trunk, and off you go.

if you pull the covers off, you'll see that the bottom 1/3 is power supply
and fans, the front 2/3 above the power supply is disk/tape/cd, and the back
2/3 above the power supply is the card cage.

if hp really wanted to, it could put together an hp3k about the size of a
full height desktop or even a pizza box pc.  a horizontal card cage, the
scsi/lan/console card on the bottom with the cpu board over it.  that's 3"
of height including the heat sinks.  since there's not room for a memory
expander, they'd probably have to use a cpu board with on-board memory
slots.  in the same box, you could squeeze in a thin scsi drive and a dat
(or use an external dat).  there wouldn't be room for any addon cards.  the
power supply could be a heavy duty pc style, since components don't draw
that much power anymore.
i'd question the reliability of this package compared to commercial hp3ks -
plastic in the case to save weight, excessive heat, moving it around, etc,
all would contribute to failures.  but this would more than suffice for most
demo and development needs, fit in a suitcase, and weigh no more than a
standard pc.  you could do it right now if you had a 3-4" backplance (the lx
backplane is the width of the lx box).

maybe they'll change they're mind about running mpe on merced.

>SUPPORT comes from a different cost center
which is the bottom line.  i've always found hp support, especially
software, to be high priced.

>At $3k-$6k for each compiler you rack up
>quite a bill just to be able to write software
unless hp can come up with both affordable software and support options, the
portable/developer computer idea will die.

lance