3000 NewsWire

Resource 3000 calls community for survey

HP 3000 homesteading (and migration) supplier Resource 3000 wants to know how the HP 3000 community is managing to stay on the platform. The company posted a notice this week which asks for input on a 10-question survey.

Question 1 is "Are you or your company still operating an e3000? If your answer is "No," you are almost done with this questionnaire!"

But answer a yes and you can provide the community, including yourself, with a snapshot of 3000 homesteading (or migration) in 2007. Resource 3000 will summarize the survey results for all HP 3000 customers who respond. The survey is online at www.resource3000.com/survey.php

Resource 3000's Steve Cooper said the survey's specific information "which promises to be interesting" will not be shared with any third party. He added that it's a chance to "share your
thoughts on where we are and where we're heading."

Cooper, who manages Resource 3000 partner member Allegro Consultants, said in an e-mail to the HP 3000 newsgroup

To better serve this still-vibrant community, we’d like to find out who’s going (why, how, and where to), who’s staying, and what their associated issues are. We, in turn, will share a summary of the results-which promise to be interesting-with all who participate in the survey.

Fourth gen language aims for fifth decade

    The new TransAction moves Transact apps to new platforms and supports 3000 versions.

    HP 3000 development partners have demonstrated their resourceful habits many times during the platform’s four decades of service. Now a 30-year-old language and its unique architecture on MPE/iX are getting refurbished to move away from the 3000 — or continue an MPE life with an up-to-date library.

   The Transact/3000 product was developed in 1977 by David Dummer of Imacs, offering a product that was among the first rapid development tools (RDTs) for the platform. HP picked up the product in 1981 and sold it, along with several report writers, as the Rapid family of tools. A few thousand 3000 customers adopted Transact over the next decade or so, making Transact a Fourth Generation Language — or more accurately, a “three and a half GL,” according to ScreenJet’s Alan Yeo.

   4GLs, as these solutions have been called, delivered a faster way to create applications than third-gen languages such as COBOL. Speedware and PowerHouse are other choices either working on 3000s or embedded inside 3000 apps.

   Yeo’s firm has been working with Dummer for four years, through investigations, coding and tests, to create TransAction, a software suite that includes a new Transact Function Library. That library is in production use at more than 30 former HP 3000 installations, part of ScreenJet’s footprint for the Transact to COBOL T2C solution.

   The newest solution eliminates Transact’s lock-in to 3000 and MPE/iX, Yeo says. While the installed base has dwindled to a few hundred sites — HP forced Transact off its “strategic” list in favor of another product — Yeo said that the small target market still warranted the work.

 

“It’s a complete re-write of Transact into TransAction, for what we all have to admit is a tiny niche market,” he said. “Well, those of us who have worked in the 3000 aren’t afraid of niche markets.”

   The software stands on the shoulders of ScreenJet’s work to deliver T2C, Yeo added. TransAction supplements the Transact Function Library with a compiler and a run-time version, software that allows Transact code to be moved to HP-UX and Linux. A Windows target version of TransAction “can be supplied when required,” Yeo said.

   Dummer said the product eliminates the migrating customers’ effort of putting Transact code onto other platforms. “How much simpler for these users if the application source could be kept as Transact on the migration platform,” Dummer said. “The result was the creation of a prototype of a compiler and transaction engine that made full use of the existing Transact Function Library.”

   TransAction is made of a compiler which generates a file containing a high level process code instruction set, plus a transaction engine which performs the application instructions from the file. “The transaction engine fully supports the various Transact process control structures such as LEVEL, PERFORM, DO and RETURN(n),” Dummer said.

   The Unix/Linux versions also use an OS Module to tap the native functions of the new target platforms. The Module interfaces with tools such as AMXW from Speedware, MPUX from Ordina-Denkart, Intrinsix from Resource 3000 partner Allegro Consultants, and Transport from TransforMix. These allied tools give HP 3000 sites access to new-platform functionality through MPE/iX commands and intrinsics, to make migrations less complex and deliver payback sooner.

Fall 3000 meeting by the Bay?

    Rumors float this month, while the wheels turn for a November 3000 do, as the British would call a gathering.

    Can the 3000 community keep itself from meeting? Signs during this summer point to no, and a novel meeting that is gathering steam by San Francisco Bay.

   The year 2007 posed the prospect of being without a gathering dedicated to the HP 3000. But now a cadre of luncheon launchers, led by Europeans Alan Yeo and Michael Marxmeier, wants to give away place-settings once again. A limited capacity, one-Saturday luncheon and networking day meeting is emerging on the Euros’ dance card for November.

   The pair of men, whose ScreenJet and Eloquence firms drove a 2005 HP 3000 Luncheon, appear to be at it once more. With pledged support from MB Foster and Speedware, and requests out to other key 3000 supporters, a weekend do, as the British say, seems likely to form.

   Novelty has never been in short supply among the 3000 community’s developers and entrepreneurs, as evidenced by a new wrinkle in the meeting concept. The gathering will have an attendee limit — the talk is 50, maybe as many as 100. The agenda is wide enough to include updates on 3000 solutions for homestead and migration sites, but leaves room for informal dinner gatherings around a day-long event including a lunch.

   The meeting, as-yet unnamed but being scouted, will be free. Attendees will bear only travel expenses — which can range from the Europeans’ Trans-Atlantic trip costs to a few gallons of gas for a drive to the area hotel. The payoff is a weekend day or so to network, trade tips and get updates.

   In 2005 Yeo and Marxmeier, with on-site help from QSS founder Duane Percox, gathered about 25 customers and partners for a short-notice luncheon near San Francisco. Interex had cancelled its conference and gone bankrupt so quickly that 3000 community members got stuck with travel tickets to a city with no HP meeting.

   This year’s instigators promise to give the community enough notice to book travel, or keep a weekend open — as well as a pledge to follow though with the event once it’s established.

   At presstime of our printed issue, the details of this Bayside MPE Meeting — a monicker we use for lack of a finalized name — were still developing. Keep up to date with The 3000 NewsWire’s blog for particulars. In our office, we are keeping our November calendar ready for an MPE/iX networking trip. The current buzz has the gathering on the weekend of November 17.

Vance lands his bike on a 3000-friendly path

HP's Jeff Vance — one of the most prolific contributors of HP 3000 software and utilities — retired from HP on May 31. It took him less than two months to land his next job, writing software for educational application vendor QSS. The firm is carefully migrating some of its HP 3000 customers to Linux and HP-UX, and Vance will be helping in the effort as a Senior Technologist.

I now work for Quintessential School Systems (QSS) in San Mateo. They develop, sell, and support quality financial apps for public school districts K-12 and have generous share of the market.

I'll get to wear several hats at QSS -- I'm wearing two now with more to come shortly! They really are a great company. The folks I've met are ethical, hard-working, kind, smart, and have a healthy work-life balance.

I have the title of "Senior Technologist" and all I know for sure is they got the "senior" part right!  I am starting off learning the Ruby language and using it in a Ruby on Rails framework for new web apps. I'll be able to work directly with customers too! So far the job is great!  I even have an office with a door -- wow!

Vance spent much of his most productive time for the 3000 at a home office in the Santa Cruz Mountains. An avid mountain biker, he's taking his bike to work now. "I even brought my bicycle to work today and did a short lunch ride -- there are 7.5 miles of singletrack trails in a nearby park!"

It's a kudo for QSS to land Vance as well. When he retired from 28 years' work with the 3000 for HP, he said "I am looking at other companies where I can wear several hats, and help them create solutions to delight customers. I want to remain close to the end users."

HP 3000 veterans can leverage their IT development experience for new positions. Even if MPE and COBOL is all you know well, you've probably also gained great insights into building business solutions for end-users.

Telling stories to create an HP 3000 history

NewsWire Editorial

By Ron Seybold

    We tell stories to propel ourselves through life. The tales can repeat what we’ve heard, invent accounts based on misunderstanding, even suture facts together like a kind of Frankenstein monster: something living at the moment, but unlikely to survive into its golden years.

    Judging by the pulse of remember-when storytelling, the HP 3000 community may be entering its golden years by now. If that phrase feels like a bad fit for a computer cancelled by its maker, you might see more monsters lurking in the dark of the future. It’s okay — plenty of people make choices to avoid the unknown.

    The monsters for your community include a vanishing HP 3000 ecosystem, as well as across-the-board risk for companies which still run the computer as a mission-critical tool. I’ve heard both stories in the past few weeks. I question whether either tale will stand up for many more years.

   History will tell, people say. Experts and storytellers use that phrase to seal off discussions, like corking off a bottle of scotch after a few wee drams. But even when history tells, many years later, one person is telling. Like all historians, they express their views in what they choose, blending a taste of the past like a mélange of wine.

   In my home’s buffet sits one of those bottles, a red that doctors say we should sip to maintain our health. The bottle calls itself Synergy, a blend of Sirah, Zinfadel and just a touch of Sangiovese. The brand is Novella (another story metaphor) offered by EOS Winery.

    Okay, it’s just too obvious by now — EOS, End of Support. When is the end of support for the 3000, anyway? Long ago in 2001, when we were all more dewy-eyed about what to fear, HP assured us all that 2006 was the end of the 3000’s story.

   Then HP altered the ending, like having more chapters added to a book on your nightstand while you sleep next to it. The EOS of 2006 became “at least 2008.” This is not a story with a firm ending. I know that feeling. Even with many pages written in a novel, I find its last act is changing, gathering up a different ending.

  However, all that I’m doing is telling a story in that novel to entertain, maybe enlighten. I’m not trying to advise companies on how to invest in IT, or when to embrace change. Hewlett-Packard will do that for you, on some days. At other times HP says it’s up to you to decide your ending — but they have newer books ready when you finish.

 

An indefinite ending can enrage some people. In June, millions howled when The Sopranos ended in a stunning flash to black, at a peak of tension in a scene, with a rock anthem in mid-verse in the background. How could they do this to us, people screamed. The wrap-up episode did a good job with many loose ends, but the fate of Tony Soprano was unresolved.

   As a storyteller, I admired the ending. Yes, I did have to lean forward and check if the cable box had died on us, the finish was so sudden. But as Abby and I sat there together, mute as a pair of giraffes, I understood why the storytelling stopped as it did. It’s up to us to decide the ending of something as epic. Nobody has to tie a bow on something as massive as 86 Sopranos episodes, or 35 years (so far) of HP 3000 history.

   History is on my mind this month because I’ve cracked open my notes on a history of HP 3000. People have been generous with stories that can make a history, like the tale of the first ordered HP 3000 or how HP’s first rapid development tool arrived on the scene.

   I’m all too happy to blend these wines, like that bottle of Synergy. But I know that I’m writing a history that doesn’t have an ending, only lessons.

    You don’t have to agree about the need for a tidy ending. Abby reads mysteries, I’ve got a Orson Scott Card’s science fiction in my bookcases — all of these stories demand a resolution. Even a TV series can have a well-drawn conclusion, like the classic Six Feet Under episode, looking nearly 100 years forward in under fives minutes of screen time.

   This relates to the HP 3000. Endings, and the future, loom large in the minds of 3000 customers. HP sent a signal, almost six years ago, that the computer’s chronicles will wrap up much sooner than later. But the ending appears to be much more like The Sopranos finale than any Elizabeth Peters cozy mystery.

   Just a few weeks ago, Jennie Hou of the 3000’s HP business office said the vendor still hasn’t decided how long HP will support the server. The risk of using the computer continues to escalate, she says in our Q&A interview. However, the specifics about that risk “are left as an exercise for the reader.” HP can offer examples, sure.

   But nobody knows which examples apply. Except you, or your migration advisors who’ve seen your IT organization, applications and processes. The next time you hear somebody say something like “I’d move heaven and earth to get off of an HP 3000 now,” try not to bounce away from such reactionary spew. Yeah, I actually read that someplace yesterday.

   Sure, there are companies who need to move heaven and earth to migrate. There are addicts who shouldn’t even keep red wine vinegar in their panty, let alone red wine. Every case is a little different. Every history includes different tales from different storytellers. Just because they say it’s history doesn’t make it true.

   Keep an eye out for details, specifics of authority and credibility that build a strong foundation for trust. When you hear a barb about heaven and earth, try to learn which universe the speaker hovers in today. Is it in celestial front-line experience, or an armchair at the computer screen? Idle gossip over a cell phone, or war dispatches about an IT disaster that will never make the press? (Honest and hoary stories about failure take many years to surface, I’ve learned.) Has the speaker served in active duty, or just borrowed an old service cap to pose as a modern-day migration veteran?

   History is supposed to teach us how to avoid tomorrow’s mistakes. As we work into the third year of our news blog storytelling, I hope for many more tales from you about the HP 3000’s past. Looking back lets us all analyze, not just romanticize. Your community is creating new tales, even today, about how to manage a platform transition. We’re here to help spread the word. The richest stories I’ll save for that history I’m writing — with your help, I hope.

Q&A: Visualizing HP's new level of support

New HP e3000 business manager Jennie Hou briefed The 3000 NewsWire on the concepts of HP's continuing 3000 support. We spoke at this summer's HP Technology Forum.

Why is HP visualizing a new custom level of support?
    We believe there may still be customers out there needing help from HP. We will evaluate customer needs based on HP’s local capabilities and on an individual basis. If there are local capabilities, we will still be able to provide troubleshooting and problem isolation services. We can provide existing patches if they would solve these problems, provide workarounds, and/or binary patches whenever possible. What we won’t be doing is to create new General Released patches or enhancements.

So what kind of patches will HP create in this post-Basic Support phase?
    Hypothetically, if the Customized Legacy Support is invoked, only site-specific binary patches and workarounds will be provided. That’s what we’re envisioning, and it’s a natural support evolution for products that are reaching end-of-life.

Does any of this change HP’s overall position about its future with the 3000, or the customer recommendation?
    No, we still strongly recommend that our customers migrate off the 3000 to other HP solutions. Every day they’re still on the 3000 there are more risks involved.

    We do understand that migrations can take longer than planned. We are trying to achieve the right business balance by listening to what our customers are saying and working together with our partners in the e3000 ecosystem.

Will the Customized Legacy stage allow HP to reduce the amount of its resources devoted to the platform? Are there now only a few people in the company who spend all of each day, every workday in a month, dedicated to HP 3000 work?
    As we are reaching the end-of-life for the e3000 platform, it’s normal to have decreased resources over time. However, it’s HP’s policy not to disclose any specific numbers.

Does HP intend to exit the support business for the 3000 at some date?

    Of course. Eventually there will be no HP support of the 3000. HP will exit that support business completely. HP cares about our installed base and wants to help our customers in maintaining a stable e3000 environment while they conduct their migrations. Therefore, the support model evolves based on customer needs and balanced business approach.

So does HP have a date to end its support services for the 3000? Or are you going to let customers tell you when such Customized Legacy support is no longer needed?
    We’ve been describing a conceptual model. There’s no time frame associated with it. Basic Support is being offered at least through 2008, and we’re going to stay with that date for now.

Will the end of all of HP’s 3000 support trigger the licensing of any parts of MPE/iX mentioned in HP’s December 2005 announcement?
    When the end of support date is there, we will be working backward. We will work with any interested parties as well as OpenMPE. HP feels very strongly that 12 months of lead time to prepare third parties is enough. If X is the end date, then X-minus a year will be our timeframe.   

HP has said in the past it will work with third party support companies where HP can’t provide services to its customers. What will HP do to enable these support companies to step in to provide 3000 support that HP is backing away from? What about OpenMPE assuming some of this work?
    There have always been third party support companies in the 3000 community; that’s nothing new. We are working with OpenMPE. That’s why Jeff Bandle is here, as the new liaison to OpenMPE board. We are also talking to third parties, looking at third party options out there.

  When HP leaves the 3000 support business, we’ll update our customers accordingly.

How do you like the new job, here in the first month or so?
    I always enjoy working with customers and partners, this expanded role offers me more opportunity to do that. There are lot of people in our [HP 3000] organization that are very customer-focused, and I get to introduce two new customer/partner representatives: Craig Fairchild and Jeff Bandle.

HP Q&A: Hou envisions post-08 support

Jennie Hou may get to author HP’s final chapters in the 3000 saga. A veteran of 23 years of HP’s work on the platform, Hou took over the reins for 3000 business manager Dave Wilde when he moved on to another HP division late this spring. Like Wilde, Hou joined an HP 3000 group when the platform was rising to its peak installed base, a day when the vendor was active in the software tools market for MPE V and then MPE/XL.

   Hou began her computer experience during her high school years, as many 3000 veterans have, attending a Fortran class. She brought a Computer Science degree to HP when she joined in 1984 and later earned an MBA.

   Hou has been a part of many of the areas of HP’s business: Release Management, Quality, R&D, Partners’ Consulting, Marketing, Planning, and Escalation Management. Her work includes communication with partners and customers, as well as many years of labor to make Oracle a database alternative for HP 3000 sites. Hou has worked with Oracle for more than a third of her HP career.

   It would be fair to describe the Oracle assignment as yeoman work, considering how few HP 3000 sites deployed the IMAGE databaase alternative and how much effort she and HP invested in the relationship. Between 1992 and 1996, the porting and consulting team worked onsite with the Oracle Lab team at Oracle’s corporate headquarters in the Bay Area. Hou later became the business and technical alliance manager for the HP e3000/Oracle relationship and stayed with the project through 1999.

   This year she assumes the official title of R&D Project Manager in the HP’s Business Critical Systems Customer Experience Technology Division. Hou becomes a key leader in shaping serious endgame decisions for HP’s 3000 business: source code licensing, cooperation with third party support firms, release of HP intellectual property to the community and more. During the HP Technology Forum, HP's update for the 3000 customer included a talk on the Customized Legacy support concept, something that — if it emerges — will keep HP in the 3000 support business beyond 2008. We spoke with Hou to find out more at this summer’s Forum.

There’s been talk this week of a new Customized Legacy support concept for the 3000. How is HP thinking about this, and where will the company find the need for such an offer?

   Customized Legacy support is something that Basic support may evolve into, but since it currently is a conceptual model, please take what we’re saying as a framework. It’s based on feedback we received from the installed base and our partners as we continue to monitor our customers’ needs and concerns.

   The theme we have been communicating is that there are stages in the 3000’s lifecycle. The first one was from the 3000’s introduction back in the ‘70s until 2001; we offered full support with active development. When we announced obsolescence in 2001 we went into another phase. This second phase had full support with limited development. The development work was to ensure there was a stable environment and availability of the latest platforms so we can give people the time to go through this transition.

   When we reached the end of 2003 we stopped selling systems, but we did provide hardware add-ons for another year. All along, HP provided full support for our customers on a worldwide basis where we worked on fixing defects, delivering General Release patches and PowerPatch Releases for our [support] customers.

  As we approached 2006, we also heard from customers that migrations were taking longer. There were many reasons: budget, internal timelines, government regulations they needed to prepare for, etc. Everything got shifted farther out, because there’s always a gap between planning and implementation.

   Despite this fact, migration had passed the plateau and we were in a downward curve. However, there will still be some customers planning and migrating beyond 2008.

   We’ve heard a lot of success stories with the migrations, and lots of ISVs are offering other HP solutions for our customers. The installed base is transitioning, and many have completed those transitions.

   On the other hand, because of extensive and complex home-grown solutions, it is taking some large accounts a longer than anticipated amount of time to complete their migrations.

    In working with our customers and partners on these migrations, we have seen a lot of different scenarios out there. Therefore, we extended “basic” support through 2008. This support phase has limitations. We will not do enhancements to support new peripherals. We only do critical bug fixes with some limited enhancements to improve stability. These are things like securing the FTP environment and SCSI pass-through. We look to choose those efforts that will help our customers have longer business continuity and connectivity.

   People who need more than Basic Support can work with HP to get customized support for their mission-critical environment. So far, in general, this has been meeting our customers’ needs.

   We do want to stress the fact that there are fewer options as time goes on. In the basic support life cycle we have dropped some products, such as Java and Predictive Support. So there are some restrictions.

   We believe there is another possible phase we call “customized legacy” support. It will be one more step down from the “basic” support. It will be based on local capabilities and with even more restrictions.

Free 3000 terminal emulator earns update

The freeware program QCTerm, a admirable alternative for HP 3000 shops with little budget for emulator programs, just got a 3.0 version during the last week.

AICS Research, one of the oldest third parties in the HP 3000 community, developed QCTerm for its users of QueryCalc. The program's development stretches back 10 years, an extraordinary lifespan for any software offered for free. Emulator licensing fees being a roadblock to those customers during the late 1990s — as well as another facet of technical support involving emulator companies — AICS founder Wirt Atmar led a successful project, which culminated in a 1.0 version, to build software which turns a PC into an emulator — of HP 3000 terminals, as well as other hosts.

Atmar just reported to the community, over the Internet newsgroup, what the new 3.0 offers and where the program is headed in its next version.

This new version has been modernized for several new features, and because of contracts with several agencies, a number of enhancements have been added. Of all those, the one item that might be of use to you is that hotlinks to URLs have been added to the terminal’s display. If you have text anywhere on your screen that begins with an “http://” and you double-click it, we now bring up a web browser and go to the address that’s been specified.

The new version can be downloaded from

aics-research.com/qcterm/index.html

Please let me know if you have any trouble with anything. Surprisingly, QCTerm is still getting about 100 downloads a week, even though there’s less and less demand for a full HP terminal any longer.

The next major enhancement I intend is to put SSH 1 and 2 support into the terminal.

AICS is keeping the free program up to date with the latest Microsoft operating system, too.

If you’re running Vista, I’d appreciate it if you would download and try this version. Several people who are using Vista have commented on problems that they’ve had installing the older version, Version 2.1.

We have Vista machines here, but we’ve had no problems at all. I suspect the root cause of the problems lies with the installer we wrote ourselves during Windows 3.x days.

We’re using InstallShield now for the installer for the new version (and that increases the install from 2.4 MB to 14.0 MB, simply because InstallShield transports everything it might conceivably need with the installation program). This new version can now be installed anywhere that you wish, rather than merely at the c:\ root as all previous versions had to be.

The bounty of ODE, only a password away

Yesterday we forwarded a report from Stan Sieler, HP's most recent recipient of the "e3000 Contributor of the Year" award, on the state of HP 3000 diagnostics. One super diagnostic program, ODE, holds a wide range of test programs.

These testing pieces of software got more important during the last year, since HP mothballed its Predictive Support service for the HP 3000. Predictive dialed into a 3000, poked around to see what might be ready to break, then reported to HP's support engineers.

Diagnostics are a manual way to perform the same task, or fix something that's broken. ODE, a set of offline tools, is all tucked away behind a password that only HP's support staff can deliver for your 3000. Sieler reports:

I ran each one, and documented whether or not it requires a password. (A few utilities seem to have little or no use because HP hasn’t provided a method of saying “hey, my disk drive isn’t an HP drive, and it’s over here”.)

ODE is a collection of diagnostics/utilities, each different.

            

******             Offline Diagnostic Environment                    ******
******                TC  Version A.02.26                            ******
******                SysLib Version A.00.78                         ******
******                Loader Version A.00.62                         ******
******                Mapfile Version A.01.61                        ******

(ODE)     Modules on this boot media are:

filename    type    size     created   description
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
README2     TM      63       04/07/13  64 bit version that displays README fil
MAPPER2     TM      146      04/07/13  64 bit version of the system mapping ut
MEM2        TM      257      04/07/13  64 bit Memory diagnostic
AR60DIAG2   TM      590      04/07/13  Fibre Channel 60 disk array utility (64
ARDIAG2     TM      682      04/07/13  64 bit version of the ICE & ICICLE disk
ASTRODIAG2  TM      273      04/07/13  64 bit version of the ASTRO IO Controll
COPYUTIL2   TM      320      04/07/13  64 bit version of the Disk-to-tape copy
DFDUTIL2    TM      264      04/07/13  64 bit version of the Disk firmware dow
DISKEXPT2   TM      241      04/07/13  64 bit version of the expert disk utili
DISKUTIL2   TM      222      04/07/13  64 bit version of the nondestructive di
NIKEARRY2   TM      324      04/07/13  Nike disk array utility
VADIAG2     TM      906      04/07/13  hp StorageWorks Virtual Array Utility
WDIAG       TM      1084     04/07/13  CPU diagnostic for PCX-W processors
IOTEST2     TM      880      04/07/13  64 bit version that runs ROM-based self
PERFVER2    TM      126      04/07/13  64 bit version that runs ROM-based self

ODE> mem2
******                         Version B.02.27                       ******
Enter password or a <CR> to exit:

ODE> ar60diag2
******                            AR60DIAG2                          ******
******                         Version B.03.29                       ******
Enter password or a <CR> to exit:

ODE> ardiag2
******                             ARDIAG2                           ******
******                         Version B.05.11                       ******
Enter password or a <CR> to exit:

ODE> astrodiag2
******                           ASTRODIAG2                          ******
******                         Version B.00.25                       ******
Enter password or a <CR> to exit:

ODE> copyutil2
******                            COPYUTIL2                          ******
******                 Version B.01.11 (19th Mar 2004)               ******

no password
NOTE: didn't seem to want to see Seagate disk drive.

            Copy Utility (COPYUTIL) Help Menu
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

  UTILINFO  - Shows information on COPYUTIL including quick start info.
  HELP      - This menu, or use HELP <help item> for more detailed help.
  DISPMAP   - Displays the devices found.
  TAPEINFO  - Reads the header of a tape and displays the  information,
              such as the  product  string  and path of the  disk,  the
              creation date, the vol #, and so forth.
  TAPEDRVINFO  - Reads the hard compression mode of a tape drive and
              displays the information,
              The info is only available for SCSI/FIBRE DAT tape drives.
  DRVINFO   - Shows inquiry information of any disk drive or tape drive. 
  TLINFO    - Shows inquiry information for a Tape Library/Autochanger. 
              The addresses of robot hands, magazine slots and tape
              drives are listed there.
  TLMOVE    - Moves a tape from a magazine into a tape drive, or vise versa.
  BACKUP    - Copies data from a disk to tape(s).
  RESTORE   - Copies from tape(s) back to a disk (The tape must be made
              with COPYUTIL's BACKUP command).
  VERIFY    - After a successful BACKUP, by VERIFY user may double check
              the contents of the tape(s) with the data on the disk.
  COPY      - Copies from a disk device to another disk device.
              The supported devices are restricted to SCSI devices so far.
  FORMAT    - Formats a given disk back to its default values.
  TERSEERR  - Turns on or off the terse error flag.  Default is off.
  IGNOREERR - Turns on or off the ignore error flag.  Default is off.

ODE> dfdutil2
******           Disk Firmware Download Utility 2 (DFDUTIL2)         ******
******                 Version B.02.21 (23rd Sep 2003)               ******
No Disks were found. 

didn't seem to want a password.
Since Seagate disks are so prevalent, one would expect some means of
updating firmware on them ... if firmware updates exist.

ODE> diskexpt2
******                            DISKEXPT2                          ******
******                         Version B.00.23                       ******
Enter password or a <CR> to exit:

Note: although it doesn't "see" Seagate drives, you can configure them in
and access them.

ODE> diskutil2
******                            DISKUTIL2                          ******
******                         Version B.00.22                       ******
No supported devices found on this system.

Note: doesn't "see" Seagate drives, and you can't configure them in.

ODE> nikearry2
******                            NIKEARRY2                          ******
******                         Version B.01.12                       ******
Enter password or a <CR> to exit:

ODE> vadiag2
******                             VADIAG2                           ******
******                         Version B.01.07                       ******
Please wait while the system is scanned for Fibre Channel Adapters...
No Fibre Channel Adapters were found.  The test cannot continue.  Aborting.

(No password requested up to that point.)

ODE> wdiag
******                              WDIAG                            ******
******                         Version A.01.53                       ******
Enter password or a <CR> to exit:

(from a friend:)
WDIAG is the PCXW ODE based diagnostic program.  It is intended
to test the Processor of the various PCXW based systems in the offline
environment.  The program consists of 150 sections, 1/150,
and are organized into the following groups:

   1.  CPU data path tests, Sections 1/6 (6 sections)
   2.  BUS-INTERFACE tests, Sections 7/10 (4 sections)
   3.  CACHE tests, Sections 11/25 (15 sections)
   4.  TLB tests, Sections 26/34 (9 sections)
   5.  CPU instruction tests, Sections 35/86 (52 sections)
   6.  CPU extended tests, Sections 87/101  (15 sections)
   7.  Floating point tests, Sections  102/134 (33 sections)
   8.  Multiple processor tests, Sections  140/150 (11 sections)

ODE> iotest2
******                             IOTEST2                           ******
******                         Version B.00.35                       ******

no password required

ODE> perfver2
******                            PERFVER2                           ******
******                         Version B.00.15                       ******

no password required

Programs off limits, without passwords

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about the HP 3000 diagnostics you cannot use — at least you can't if you're not an HP support customer. These programs reside on your HP 3000 disk, if you've installed a version of MPE/iX during the past seven years.

(And if you haven't, well, you don't really need diagnostics, do you? You've got a stable system, genuine faith in your disc drives — not to mention lots of luck.)

For the rest of the community, those self-maintaining or using third-party support, these diagnostics require a password. The question is, which diagnostics? Stan Sieler, HP's most recent recipient of the "e3000 Contributor of the Year" award, reports on the state of HP 3000 diagnostics.

The online diagnostics come in two flavors:

• Older releases of MPE/iX have online diagnostics accessed via SYSDIAG.PUB.SYS (which is a script that runs DUI.DIAG.SYS). (MPE/iX 6.0 and earlier, possibly MPE/iX 6.5 (I’m not sure))
• Newer releases of MPE/iX have online diagnostics accessed via CSTM.PUB.SYS (which is a script that runs /usr/sbin/stm/ui/bin/stmc).

Both are, well, difficult to use.  (HP-UX also switched from sysdiag to stm.) Both have some modules that require passwords, and some that don’t.

The offline diagnostics are on a bootable CD or tape. The lastest offline diagnostics CD (for PA-RISC) that I could find was labelled “2004”.

It has seven diagnostics/utilities.  I tried running all of them on an A-Class system.  The “ODE” one is special; it’s a program that itself hosts a number of diagnostics/utilities (some of which require passwords).

(I’m not saying “password protected”, because that implies they need protecting ... “password restricted” or “password deprived” might be a more accurate phrase :)

Sieler reported on the details of the "non-ODE" diagnostics. Just a sample of what you can use, and what will be waiting for HP to unlock once the vendor gets out of the 3000 support business:

filename   type   start    size     created
=====================================================
XMAP       -12960 832      1568     04/08/10 17:12:26
ODE        -12960 2400     880      04/08/10 17:12:26
EDBC       -12960 31344    1696     04/08/10 17:12:26
EDPROC     -12960 33040    6928     04/08/10 17:12:26
MULTIDIAG  -12960 39968    6256     04/08/10 17:12:26
TDIAG      -12960 46224    7216     04/08/10 17:12:26
CLKUTIL    -12960 53440    240      04/08/10 17:12:26

ISL> tdiag
...probably doesn't require a password (can't run on A-Class)

ISL> clkutil
no password

ISL> edproc
...probably doesn't require a password (can't run on A-Class)

ISL> edbc
...probably doesn't require a password (can't run on A-Class)

ISL> xmap
...probably doesn't require a password (can't run on A-Class)

ISL> multidiag
******                          MULTIDIAG                            ******
******                    Version A.01.12                            ******
Enter password or a <CR> to exit:

Tomorrow, we'll let Sieler cover the ODE diagnostics, which HP has tucked away behind a password.