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HP To Kill 3000 System After 30 years

James Ots writes "HP have announced that their 30 year old HP3000 series of computers will be joining their calculators on the scrapheap. Which is a shame, because a lot of work has gone into porting unix tools to the platform, and now we'll have to stop and port MPE (the HP3000 OS) tools to unix. Cnet have pre-announced the announcement, and the guys on comp.sys.hp.mpe don't seem too happy. (See also CSL's page on the story)"

7 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Many folks introduction to programing by cmacd · · Score: 2, Informative

    Was the old HP Computer games books that used HP 3000 basic. (of course the basic many of them were using was a copy of a DEC basic from a outfit started by a young Ivy league dropout.

    --
    Another Wild-Eyed CANADIAN.
  2. Re:Who gets what ? by Howie · · Score: 2, Informative

    Digital had already announced the end-of-life for VMS when Compaq bought them, hadn't they? Or am I mis-remembering that? I have to admit that I try to suppress most memories I have that involve VMS - they remind me too much of FORTRAN, Physics, and overly long command lines.

    --
    "don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
  3. You've got 5 years, at least... by RocketJeff · · Score: 2, Informative
    According to the CNet article, "HP plans to support existing customers for the next five years, two sources said. Sales of existing systems and upgrades will continue through the end of 2002." Since the systems you have won't suddenly stop working when HP stops supporting them, you probably have 6 or 7 year before things are really critical.

    It is time to start planning a migration strategy. Evidently there are already some tools available to migrate to other platforms but this might be a good chance for your company to take a step back and reexamine the system as a whole - a rewrite might be in order.

  4. The official word from HP by eufaula · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here is the official announcement from HP.

  5. kinda sad news by Lurking+Grue · · Score: 3, Informative

    We found out yesterday morning. An HP service rep called one of our supervisors at home to break the news. While I'm not the one who manages these boxes at our site (I've got the UX machines), I do know that they are the most reliable of anything we've got. They just don't go down, and I guess this is bad news for HP. They need stuff to break so they can boost sales and services.

    We've still got several critical apps running on MPE, including our 911 software for PD. These things are bulletproof, and I cringe at the thought of the PD folks going out and choosing an NT solution now. I can only hope a decent 911 app for UX exists.

  6. Re:Who gets what ? by Chakat · · Score: 2, Informative
    Digital had already announced the end-of-life for VMS when Compaq bought them, hadn't they? Or am I mis-remembering that?

    I think you mistook their discontinuing the VAX line, the hardware that originally ran VMS. VMS also runs on the Alphas, and is still very much actively supported. Though the spirit of both is somewhat the same; the high end non-unix hardware is obsoleted because the performance reasons of having a much less intuitive system are lessened by newer, faster hardware.

    --

    If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.

  7. It's sad -- kinda ... by dmarcov · · Score: 2, Informative

    The HP3000 was the first computer I actually had any "control" over. My high school had a 3rd one with a room full of terminals that they used to teach a Pascal course (if you can imagine). Right after I graduated they were all replaced with PS/2 Model 30's -- which could not have been any where near as much fun as:

    1.) Learning how much fun the "down" command was as a cheap prank.
    2.) Sending messages from the consoles to newer newbies that their terminal was about to explode.
    3.) Mystery Mansion
    4.) The Land of Warp -- and I don't care what Adventureland says (http://www.lysator.liu.se/adventure/), Warp was weeks of fun.

    Of course, when the AC went out at my school, the nicely cooled server room was a favorite place. Oh yeah -- and I think I still owe my school $376.58 for the service call when I downed the console. It seemed clever at the time.

    At least I wasn't the one who hit the Emergency Stop button ...

    Now I suppose where the "kinda" comes in is ...well... it's been close to 15 years now since then, it's hard to believe HP was still signing people up for new ones.