HP's is making good on its commitment to get enhancements rolled out for the HP 3000, and the logjam of beta test patches looks like it broke up a little at the end of August. A new 7.0 version of patch MPEMX39B, for example, went into general release. This patch fixed problems with Series 997s using more than 3.75GB of memory:

The 7.0 (B) version of this patch includes the new :SHUTDOWN command introduced with MPEMX06. There are new catalog messages associated with this enhancement, so if patch MPEMX08, or a patch which supersedes it, is not already installed, it is recommended that it be installed at the same time as this patch.

HP's patch process tests against many interdependencies; a repair patch like MPEMX39 needed to be altered to accomodate the SHUTDOWN command. HP's has released patches for 6.5 that include repairs to Network Services Transport, telnet, SNMP, and Streams/iX.

HP is going to make it even easier to keep up with changes to its patching process this fall, the vendor promises. It will use RSS feeds for patch updates, a Web format which makes reviewing new material much simpler than reading through the rough formats of HP's e-mail notificiations. An article out on the HP Web site explains RSS  — a tool we use to deliver this blog's headlines, by the way; just click on the link at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar to take our headline feed (feed://feeds.feedburner.com/3000Newswire). You can see how HP's press release headlines look by entering the following address in your RSS reader or RSS-friendly browser:

feed://www.hp.com/hpinfo/news.xml