Wirt,

I respectfully tend to disagree with your assertion re the latest MPE
rev.  I suppose that going back to the root question's premise may be in
order.  Is it an absolute given that only one version of MPE is going to be
released by HP for emulation?

In the case of classic MPE, I would presume that only having the final
release in that architecture seems appropriate, but for RISC based MPE
systems, I don't think that the answer is so simple.

Some of my own "eBay 3Ks" came with a really early MPE/xl version installed
(much to my horror as NS/3000 was not bundled in my version which was after
all part of the reason I wanted these systems in the first place, but I
digress), indicating that the prior owners were running along quite happy
on an out of date, but reliable version for their needs.

This reality brings us to such ugly thoughts as why would one want or have
to support an earlier version?  Perhaps the core application suite the
company is using is only supported on that version because the provider
company went out of business.  Perhaps it is a hardware support issue, as
some others on this list have mentioned.  No matter the reason, one must
accept the reality that some will need earlier versions.  Still, it is
understandably difficult for a new enterprise to support all flavors of MPE.

So how about finding logical split points based upon some major
functionality change, like the dropping of support for HB-IB devices (and
yes PC cards did exist that allowed one to connect HB-IB devices to PCs at
a physical level from ISA slots because HP-IB is also IEEE 488 an early
standard for interfacing instruments - [wonder how THAT happened - isn't HP
that laser printer company?  Oh, no wait, they bought Compaq, so they must
also be into PCs], however I suspect that driver support for specific 3000
related HP-IB devices would probably need to be done.  I also suspect that
one probably could get a PCI based HP-IB card, but as I have not checked, I
cannot say this is absolutely the case - one would think that some other
company like, say, Agilent Technologies, might be interested in such a
project or may have more information on this).

Bottom line, I would think last MPE CISC version, last HP-IB supporting
RISC and last released RISC versions would seemingly be the most logical
choices.

Finally, would members of this list please modify the subject heading when
replying if appropriate.  I just got a bunch of messages that touched upon
different points to Jon's original message - all worthy, its just that
sorting out who was replying to what confuses my grossly limited grey
matter.  Tracking a discussion by subject thread is a good thing.

Best,

Alan Maitland
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The Commerce Company - Making Commerce Simple(sm)
http://WWW.Commerco.Com/

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At 03:34 PM 11/13/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Mark asks:
>
> > However, the main point isn't the emulation per se, but which version
> >  of MPE should be considered as the vehicle in the event that MPE
> >  source is made available.
>
>You would have to think that the most recent is the most logical choice.
>
>Wirt Atmar