John P. Burke writes:
>
> On 9/8, Stan Sieler said:
>
> > I've been encountering "BAD VARIABLE BLOCK STRUCTURE" on spool files
> recently...
> > so I thought I'd search HP ESC looking for info (silly me!).
>
> > (Don't worry, I'm not ranting (today, anyway) over the fact that I checked
> > "MPE", but only 8 of the 60 "hits" displayed were MPE oriented, with the
> > rest being HP-UX oriented.)
>
>   <a section on another pet peeve: MPE/iX version numbering snipped>
>
> Many people, including Stan, have been complaining about this for well
> over a year. Imagine my surprise then when no one from WCSO at HPWorld
> seemed to know about this annoying, and what should be embarrassing,
> deficiency. Including the Americas Software Service & Support Manager,
> WCSO, Nick Voigt, whom I talked with about this and other concerns after
> the Support Roundtable. He promised to follow up and, while it is still
> perhaps too soon to expect anything, I am copying him on this posting as
> a reminder.
>
> I made several suggestions for improving the usability of the ESC and
> propose that others add their ideas to this thread on HP3000-L. The
> potential for the ESC to be really useful is there - it just needs some
> attention.

HP is listening to our comments about ESC.

During HPWorld, I was invited to a special focus group session at the Sheraton,
consisting of a customer from Boeing (9000), two customers from Pepsi (9000s),
myself (the token small 3000 customer ;-)), and about 5 HP people.  The whole
session was videotaped.  At least one of the HP people subscribes to HP3000-L.

The HP people asked both specific questions about certain ESC features, as well
as more general "What issues do you have?" kinds of questions.  I raised the
issue about the mix of HPUX and MPE hits when only one category is requested;
the other customers also experience this and find it annoying.

There were additional ESC focus groups held during HPWorld, one of which was
attended by a well-known (and vocal) HP3000-L customer subscriber.  I'm sure
he raised all of the usual hot issues that have been talked about here in
the past.
--
Mark Bixby                      E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Coast Community College Dist.   Web: http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/
District Information Services   1370 Adams Ave, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-5429
Technical Support               +1 714 438-4647
"You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish." - tunefs(1M)