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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)"
Having worked for HP, I can only be glad they would scrap it. The application that are still running on this are nightmarish stuff coming from the seventies... So it's all COBOL and EDI. Yuk
In other words, important stuff that makes the world work, and has had millions of man-hours of development work put into it. These aren't your typical brochureware web sites, coded up in a few days where you can re-boot the server if anything goes wrong. Migrating these applications onto a more modern platform, including all the testing that needs to be done, is a distinctly non-trivial undertaking (these aren't like AS/400 where moving OS/400 applications from 48-bit CISC to 64-bit RISC was all taken care of by a virtual machine layer).
Think of all the time lost to update and maintain that crap!
And rewriting those applications... that's probably never going to happen. You think they're hard to maintain, they will be even more difficult to reverse-engineer when the original coders aren't around and the documentation is sketchy at best. There may not even be complete source code for any of these applications any more. C++ isn't an especially easier language to maintain than COBOL anyway.
The Linux community could really take advantage of this opportunity to score with a killer app for businesses, a HP 3000 Emulator. I know that my company would love to migrate to all of their HP 3000 programs to another solution where they would still have rock-solid reliability and now have commodity hardware prices. This could bring about a true business need for Linux support services and basically bring the motherlode of cash for Linux programmers.
Just think of it, there are thousands of big companies using the HP3000 looking for a solution over the next 5 years (when HP ends support). HP will probably try some god-awful ports to the 9000 series, but if it's not broke, just emulate it. After all, millions of man hours have been invested in getting those programs to handle mission-critical applications.
When someone writes this, let me know... my company has a large pile of cash ready for them.
As someone who learned how to program on an HP3000 *Series I* (showing my age here), I can't help but feel bad about the decision, logical though it might be. New 3000s (based on PA-RISC hardware shared with the 9000) have been sold primarily as an upgrade path for existing users for quite a while. Apparently, those users (which paid the bills at HP for many years) are (finally) starting to dry up.
My career was made by these machines, although I saw the writing on the wall quite a while back and moved on. I worked for a number of companies that used 3000's (and probably still do in some form or fashion) including a long stint as a 3000 field software engineer with HP itself.
The system aged as gracefully as any computer in history, and was based on boring old dependability, much like the company itself used to be. Between this, the instrument/medical division (now Agilent) and calculators, it feels a little like the heart of the company has been removed.
I was fortunate enough to see the very first HP inkjet (in a little case that the Boise division guy practically handcuffed to his wrist), but had no idea how big it would end up being to the company.
I know there is little room for sentimentality in the computer world, but I have just as strong nostalgic feelings for these old beasties as any vintage video game. They are certainly deserving of respect.
If Linux is around 30 years from now, I think many of you (us) would have some sad feelings if the last copy were being deleted. Even if it was being replaced with something "better".
Should I burn the MPE source code fiche, in tribute?
Smilodon
V V
It turned 30 and it's crystal turned red.
Time for Carousel.