> Since I believe SCSI-II to be a standard, and that as an interface standard
> it specifies little details like timing and commands and such, I have to
> wonder why HP doesn't get into the certification business.  If HP certifies
> a new vendor's drive as 'operable on MPE', and the vendor either pays up
> front or per unit for this certification, and the customer can purchase a
> wider variety of equipment and be assured it will work, who loses?
                                                          ^^^^^^^^^
 
HP.  I confess that I do not *know* why the HP SCSI drives are special,
but folks in HP have suggeted that there is some built in power fault
protection, and possibly other geegaws.  The war stories I've heard about
putting non-HP SCSI drives on an MPE system have convienced me to not
even try.
 
Thus HP has created in me a mini monopoly.  This may not have been their
intent, but they would be foolish to change the scheme.  I like your
notion of a certification scheme for a price, but any price they put on
that "service" would not match the income they receive from the drives.
 
Let's see . . . the newspaper tells me a local vendor is selling 1 gig
SCSI drives for $700, and HP will sell me an MPE ready 1 gig SCSI drive
for a mere $2,200, or about three times the market rate.  I wonder if
anyone like EMC is interested in sharing that $2,130 by reverse engineering
whatever HP has planted in their drives and controllers?
 
> And finally, one of the attractions (?) of Unix is the mix-and-match of
> hardware offerings.  Yes, you can quite easily lose major portions of very
> sensitive body parts if you goof, but you can also build some impressive
> hardware systems too.  That happened because of standards.  I look forward
> to the day when a really good operating system (MPE) can take advantage of
> that hardware flexibility.
 
You touched on the one point concerning UNIX which may be the driver, and
why nimrods like me don't mind paying the extra money for hardware.  UNIX
can, and at a whim will, dismember itself in a cybernetic form of auto-
masochism.  MPE doesn't.
 
What will be interesting to watch is the rise (and fall?) of NT.  With some
fault tolerence built in, and with it inevitably driving hardware prices
even lower, there may be some competition to UNIX for the small server
system.
 
And maybe more competition for MPE.
 
 =======================================================================
Guy Smith                               Voice:   804-527-4000 ext 6664
Circuit City Stores, Inc.               FAX:     804-527-4116
9950 Mayland Drive                      E-Mail:  attmail.com!bronco!guys
Richmond, VA 23233-1464         Private E-Mail:  [log in to unmask]
 
The thoughts expressed herein are mine and do not reflect those of my
employer, or anyone with common sense.