Dave writes:

> HP85 - Possibly once the worlds best BASIC language instrument controller -
>  looked like a programmable calculator.  Not very fast, but it did the job!

To bring this thread full circle, I was flabbergasted to read Joel Birnbaum's
recent statement to Linux World just a few months ago, not that the statement
isn't true, but that someone within HP would actually say it.

Joel said the following in August, congratulating himself on his capacity to
single-handedly kill Rocky Mountain BASIC, RTE, *and* MPE, getting the users
to successfully migrate over to "the far more difficult-to-use UNIX system".
The level of current disconnect within HP may be that he actually believe he
succeeded in killing MPE.

Joel said:

"In the early 80s, HP gambled on the emerging trend that open systems would
create the freedom of choice that most of our customers said they wanted. On
the resultant flat playing field, we would be able to run faster than our
larger, more entrenched competitors. We made some very bold decisions: To go
with our variant of RISC architecture because of its scalability, price and
performance; and to go with UNIX because we hoped it would lead to open
interoperable software with open network protocols to enable client/server
computing. With open peripherals HP could become a volume manufacturer of
printers, scanners, tapes and disks.

"From a distant perspective, those might sound like obvious decisions. Let me
assure you, they were not. That argument raged in the company for years and
many technical managers and executives were sure we had made a catastrophic
blunder. Some of our best people were so outraged that they left. For
example, we abandoned an industry-leading real-time proprietary operating
system -- RTE -- in favor of UNIX with the belief that we could build a
pre-emptable kernel for precise response in bounded delay situations. We made
the same UNIX choice for our HP 3000 distributed commercial machines which
ran a very successful, proprietary operating system called MPE. Providing a
smooth transition to UNIX was not only a business risk, it was a very
difficult technical challenge, as we simultaneously changed the processor
architecture, compilers, I/O and the user interface. As if this weren't
enough, we migrated to open networks and abandoned a proprietary workstation
environment known as Rocky Mountain Basic -- which had many fervent adherents
-- for the far more difficult-to-use UNIX system."

The full quote is at:

     http://www.hp.com/ghp/Highlights/24Aug00.html

To a great degree, this extraordinary attitude underlies much of our current
problem and is the reason I still occasionally suggest making CSY a
wholly-owned, independent subsidiary of HP.

Wirt Atmar