After:
>>I disagree with this completely.  One of the things MPE customers like
>>most about the HP3000 is how little operator intervention is required.
>>(Can someone back me up on this?)
 
Someone else who didn't sign their name wrote:
>I'd be happy to! In a former life, I sold HP3000s into small
>professional offices where no one was computer literate (and I mean
>absolutely no one). These offices could successfully run their
>operations with a receptionist running the computer. Even when problems
>occured they could handle them. I doubt that a receptionist could
>successfully rebuild a filesystem on a UNIX machine that was corrupted
>during a power failure without significant guru help.
 
For the record, over the last twelve years I have had and shared
system management responsibility for both MPE/V and MPE/iX
flavors of the HP3000:  Starting with a Series 42;  then Series 48,
two Series 58's, a 930, 950, 935, and 947;  and finally the current
Series 957.  Our systems normally run 24 hours x 7 days, except
for a one week shutdown between Christmas and New Year.  I
would estimate this totals about 18 machine-years of run time.
 
In those 18 machine-years of near-continuous running, only recall
ONE CASE when we had unplanned hardware hard downtime;  i.e.:
machine would not reboot (one memory module decided to have
an internal failure that Predictive Support did not detect and warn
us about, and our CE had to come out and replace it).  Of course
we have replaced a couple disc drive spindles that the system told
us were starting to go bad, and there have been the various MPE
"SYSTEM HALT 7" & etc. incidents over the years.....  But except
for that one time, we could ALWAYS reboot and get going again.
And through who knows how many unplanned  power failures, MPE
has NEVER trashed any of our data (although we have of course
had occasion to reget some of those times we said PURGE;  plus
we have used Image exclusively;  no KSAM).......
 
I say being hardware hard down one time in 18 machine years
ain't bad..........
 
And I will sign my name to the above,
 
===========================================
Ken Sletten                                       Tel:  206-396-2525
NUWC Division Keyport                Fax: 206-396-5183
Code 3311, Building 894
Keyport, WA  98345
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