I've been watching the thread on the "908" and I'd like to add my hat into
the ring for a 908.  ISS has wanted a small RISC HP 3000 since the RISC
systems came out.  We asked HP for a small, 2 or 3 user system many times
over the years, through HP reps (when we had one), customer satisfaction
survey comments, and direct comments to HP managers at many INTEREX shows.
Unfortunately, we (now I) have been waiting many years and still have not
seen an affordable HP 3000 development system (sidebar: my partner gave up
and left the HP 3000 community).

Over the years much has been made about HP starting in a garage.
Unfortunately it is almost impossible to start an HP 3000 product in a
garage these days - the cost of the system, software, maintenance, etc. for
the first year runs several times the cost of the garage!  And if I can't
afford an HP 3000, I need to develop on/for another platform... and I'm NOT
talking about the HP 9000.

As for the 908, cost will be a major consideration.  With the cost of PC
development environments so low, I have to have a justification better than
"I'd rather be developing code for the HP 3000 than for Windows 95 and
Windows NT".  Still, that is a major consideration.  I LIKE the HP 3000.
I've used the HP 3000 for nineteen years.  I WANT to develop for it.  I
CAN'T afford a five-digit price for a system.  OK, I'm a throwback and
prefer SPL and SPLASH! to  C or even Visual C++, but I know that I need two
compilers - SPLASH! and C.  And then there is the real bank breaker - the
AIFs.

Price the AIFs on the HP 3000.  OK, I know, I should have warned you to have
someone standing by with the smelling salts.  Something needs to be done
about the cost of the tools for the developers - compilers, the AIFs.
Considering the cost of the AIFs, small developers have limited choices:

   1.  patch the CM code as best you can and run it in a degraded mode on the
       RISC systems

   2.  find a customer who will fund the cost of the AIFs (not likely)

   3.  port the application to another platform

OK, how many ended up choosing option 3?

I've used the AIFs in my work with the Navy over the last few years and I
can see their value to both HP and the customer.  Among other advantages,
the customer can be quite confident that the applications which use the AIFs
won't have to be patched or rewritten whenever they move to a new version of
MPE/iX, HP doesn't have to worry about customer-written or third party
software suddenly crashing the customer's system after an MPE/iX update, and
third party developers don't have to worry about rushing new code to their
customers to avert malfunctions whenever a new version of MPE/iX is released.

Sounds like a win-win-win situation to me.  Maybe HP can consider having two
pricing schemes - the current scheme, and a second scheme where the AIFs are
available for a very low initial price but with a royalty fee due for each
copy of software sold which uses the AIFs until the full price of the AIFs
have been recovered by HP through the royalties.

Well, gotta run.  An old Series 70 running MPE V/E 2P in a far-off land is
apparently out of spool space.

John
--------------------------------------------------------------
John Korb                            email: [log in to unmask]
Innovative Software Solutions, Inc.

The thoughts, comments, and opinions expressed herein are mine
and do not reflect those of my employer(s), or anyone else.