In message 
<[log in to unmask]>, Peter M. 
Eggers <[log in to unmask]> writes
>Roy, based on your premise that only homesteaders are left that want a
>graceful way to fade away into retirement on the MPE of the '90s, you have
>raised some good points.

I didn't say that. For all I know, there are still companies out there 
that face a multi-$m migration cost away from MPE and who would be 
*very* interested in an emulator. Paradoxically, we might even find that 
HP itself is one of them.

But none of the others, if there *are* others, are represented within 
OpenMPE, as far as I know. Which is a shame, because homesteaders aren't 
going to fund this thing; if it is to get off the ground, we need 
someone for whom the cost of developing an emulator is chump change, 
especially when compared with the alternative of an expensive, lengthy 
and risky migration.

But this October makes it two in a row, in different companies, that 
I've been part of a team that's been called together suddenly and 
unexpectedly by management and told that the planned migration away from 
the HP3000 is being halted due to economic conditions.

 From the first one, my reasonable expectation of a year's work shrank to 
two weeks:-(

But the second is better for me, as keeping their HP3000 means keeping 
their HP3000 contractors :-)

But both companies would be happier, I know, if they weren't dependent 
on the dwindling stock of HP3000 hardware, and people to maintain it.

>  But, for all of the work you put into your responses, you didn't 
>touch on how the current mountain of code could be maintained with the 
>current limits on money the dwindling homesteaders could pay, nor the 
>dwindling base of people capable of maintaining it.

I had no idea I was supposed to do this. And thinking about it further, 
I wasn't.

> Even if you could, it is another order or two of magnitude to bring it 
>up to even par with MS Windows as a business app server system.

Indeed so; I've thought about how MPE could be persuaded to need all 
that horsepower, use that much memory and need that much disc space just 
for the OS, and it is indeed not a trivial task.

As would be adding the mountain of security vulnerabilities that would 
also be required for a comparable system.

>You mention that Transport/IX is available that solves the problem, then
>list all the important ways in which it does not.

I didn't say it solved the problem; I said it met your description of 
what you thought might be a useful and satisfactory halfway house. And 
as you observe, I have suggested that while it has its uses, it isn't.

>  If the website doesn't support Firefox (which is Web standards 
>compliant) and only supports IE (which does not follow standards when 
>it suits MS), then I have to assume that the product is also written by 
>(excuse the rant) "Windows Weenies",

Assume away then, and be quite wrong :-)

>which added to the long list of deficiencies, and the fact that it not 
>open source, would make the community subject to a new master that 
>might disappear at anytime, gives me absolutely no reason to 
>investigate further what appears to be a square wheel with pieces missing.

I am glad that you will take my word for the unsatisfactoriness of the 
nearest thing out there to a solution you were proposing; but here you 
are quite correct. And it being open source would be better, but would 
not put enough right to make it the solution being sought.

>In my proposal, only the minimum necessary to support homesteaders is
>provided, and that would be shoehorned into a design that was looking
>forward into the future, so that the shoehorned code could be obsoleted and
>removed easily in the future.

>I am only interested in creating a BUSINESS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT AND
>OPERATIONAL PLATFORM along the lines of Classic MPE (with all of the POSIX
>stuff staying on the Linux side of the fence) to run atop a Linux OS which
>would take care of all of the hardware drivers, networking, and process
>handling.

Do you not realise that you keep describing Transport/iX? Probably not, 
as you haven't been able, or inclined, to investigate it.

> I don't see any other way of saving MPE from a slow death at this
>time.

Well, it won't work.

And there may be no hope for MPE anyway; but if there were I'd put more 
faith in James Hofmeister's proposals for a full emulator than a sort of 
funny hybrid that just looked like MPE on the surface but had none of 
its solidity and security underneath.

Because much as I love MPE, if it were merely reduced to a rather 
antiquated GUI, it wouldn't exactly be my first choice to use.....

-- 
Roy Brown        'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd     useful, or believe to be beautiful'  William Morris

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *