We've probed the depths of the NewsWire's rat-pack — er, we mean archives — to unearth a popular bit of 3000 legend. In the spring of 1997, as part of the computer's 25th anniversary celebration, the HP 3000 division created a 3-minute video to show how the server could survive a three-story crash.

We've got our copy of the HP "customer-viewable" video available as a download in a modest QuickTime file of 7 MB. You can right-click on the link to capture the file to your disk, if you want, then play it in the standalone QuickTime player at an enlarged screen size.

There's also a version you can watch on YouTube at the 3000 NewsWire channel.

George Stachnik of HP narrates this video, produced in the era when HP was still marketing the server as a more reliable and mature choice than HP's Windows and Unix servers. Well, the vendor never really did make much of a direct comparison, even though its sales force and customers were doing just such a compare.

If you've never seen this, we won't spoil the ending. But HP 3000 customers know that the hardware which makes up their system was built far beyond the survival specs of, say, a Dell Windows 2003 server. How many servers you will need to toss off the roof of a building is an exercise we'll leave to our readers.

We invite you to share your own 3000 survival stories through the Comments link below. We'll compile what you post up as a blog entry for the future. Stay tuned to this channel for future NewsWire TV reports. Coming up: Clips from HP CEO Mark Hurd's keynote speech at the HP Technology Forum.