Perhaps this belongs on alt.folklore.something, being so nostalgic (the newcomers to the list often complain) but I love the occasional diversion. UTC had the distinction of getting the first field delivery of the final phase of the 2000 - the 2000/Access - very much the system seen in the web page so generously provided by a previous reader. Once the order was set, we obtained a demo account on Southern College's 2000/F for playing around (they are now southern.edu, we have some readers from there, and John Beckett is a legend in these parts as another HP fanatic; also home to John Kendall who developed some "interesting" plug-in patches to the 2000/Access OS to give you some incredible capabilities (he hot-wired a peek/poke type ability into one of the functions (tim()?) for an A000 user). The premier feature of the 2000/Access was the ability to "access" ASCII files - tape, printer, punch, card reader, etc. Plus the RJE capability (we used it on a grand scale). I remember Dave James and Ernie Bailey showing up one day in baby-blue "HP-logo" coveralls, looking like they belonged on a NASA team, to install the beast. Dave took a look inside the crates and said "So THAT is an Access!" and we were not terribly amused. Both went on to do great things with HP but I lost track of them and have no idea of where they are now. I think they scratched the coveralls idea shortly thereafter :-) The 2000 was an ideal educational institution's machine in it's day. We had ours from day one until the end of it's support life. The parts went in many different directions, but the original racks/cabinets still exist in our machine room, housing modems, our six DTC48s, and in fact, the Telco mux that feeds our internet connection. So a little piece of the old 2000 is still active and a part of you receiving this message. For that matter, every message sent to/from the 3000-L list has passed through the chassis of a faithful and loyal 2000 system. We will never surplus those cabinets as long as I'm on staff, unless I bring it home :-) Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]> Almost brings a tear to my eye... PS - To maintain my 3000 crusade, I should point out that a relatively trivial migration path was provided *even then* to convert 2000/Access Basic code to Basic/3000 code, and we moved over a *lot* of stuff. UTC converted the 2000 contributed library, much of the CAI stuff from the 2000, and even stuff from CONDUIT (don't remember the acronym, it was another source of contributed Basic code). Not only that, but the 3000 offered us the BASICOMP compiler!