A call was made for HP3000 Success Stories, here's one of mine (kind of). I may have said this before, but here it is again, (probably with a little more embellishment:) I was working a Hughes Aircraft in the mid 1980's and we were under pressure to get some HP3000 computer time for a new application we were developing. Due to the bureaucratic nature of Defense contractors at the time (I'm sure it has been relieved somewhat by now), we couldn't get any. We could NOT get assigned accounts and disc space from a mega-MIS computer department that had several HP3000 series 950s (those were NEW then). What we did, was go to the Hughes Surplus Warehouse (it was huge, IBM 360s, PDP-11s, leftover IBM disc farms, etc.) and dragged an old HP3000 Series III and some 792x disc drives (one model still had a window on the top) to our trailer. In our trailer, we set up a "computer room" consisting of the HP3000 Series III and the drives. There was 220v available. Bear in mind, we didn't even have an operating system. We fired it up so that there were lights on the octal display panel (although they weren't "blinking", just some on, and some off, and the disc drives were spinning. It was pretty, and it made a lot of noise. We even had a "console" powered by an HP3000 Series 37, an HP Salesman had "loaned" us. (Somehow HP Salesmen had more freedom back then.) He had loaned it with the understanding were would eventually buy it. (We never did, and we had to return it.) The Series 37 was hidden underneath my managers desk 3 offices down and was connected via a small serial cable through the overhead tiles. Then we gave the "announcement" of our "own" department's computer center. For which we said had build from scratch out of "surplus" in order to "save" Hughes aircraft money. We were able to justify it to our own higher echelon management because we weren't given computer time from the mega-MIS department. Local executives were invited for a "walk-through" through our new "computer center". Yes they were impressed by the lights, and the noise of the drives. People being political machines as it were...we were told to "shut down" this new computer room the next day. We were immediately given computer time, disc-space, and accounts also, from the mega-MIS department, that we couldn't get before. Of course we "packed it all up" and sent it back to the Hughes Surplus Warehouse. You guessed it. The director of the mega-MIS department had to tell someone "why" we weren't given any computer time before. When a decent explanation wasn't forthcoming, political hell broke loose, and we got our HP3000 Series 950 account, disc space, and CPU time. Accolades and "cost savings" award documents were handed out to all participants. We eventually did develop our program called "SPARS". It was a program translated from a Microfocus COBOL application on a PC into Powerhouse on the HP3000 using Image. (My Manager had written the program, and released his rights willingly in this case only. He still has the copyright.) It stood for "Supplier Performance and Reporting System" (or something like that) and it rated vendors based on statistics gathered about their parts during Receiving Inspection. Of course this in the end helped Hughes improve it's Quality Control during the period, as it decertified vendors based on inspection performance of MILSPEC standards. It weeded out the bad vendors and keep the good. Bad vendors had to undergo a rigorous recertification procedure. (It could still be used out there again, as ISO-9000 certification is a priority these days.) You see, HP3000 Series III's are still useful, even when they DON'T work!