After posting up one of our longest podcasts on Friday, recapping the last year of transition, I stepped out into another part of 3000 history with Vladimir Volokh, leader of 3000 utility makers VEsoft. Vladimir invited my partner Abby and I out to the best rib joint in Austin, County Line on the Lake, to celebrate "the four-year anniversary of our interview in the NewsWire."

After the three of us finished eyeing the dozens of turtles bobbing along the riverside deck, we took our lemonades inside and bobbed through tales of the present and the past of the 3000. VEsoft, makers of Security/3000 and MPEX, still count several thousand customers in their empire. It's a world where the horizon is always advancing, to paraphrase a joke Vladimir tells.

He compares the 3000's end-of-life to the horizon. "You know about horizon," the Russian emigrant says in a voice rich with charm. "Whenever you approach it, it moves farther away." We chuckled because for many 3000 sites this is true; the closer they seem to get to the cut-off for their 3000s, the farther away the end moves. Change is expensive and risky. VEsoft's customers are not the kind who embrace risk, at least not after Vladimir pays them a visit.

It's been a year since The 3000 NewsWire posted its first podcast, so it's time for our first Yearbook Podcast (6MB MP3 file) We've had great fun and hoped to entertain you with the sounds of change in your community. We looked back over our sound files to find some favorite voices telling the transition story of your business computer.

This week, with our 33rd podcast, we take 13 minutes to share them with you. Stay tuned in the months to come for more sounds of surprise and unexpected explanations. Let us hear from you about your transition when we call. Everybody deserves some airtime.

Once we posted our item about the DICE technical job listing for rewriting the PA-RISC boot sequences, a few comments from HP hardware veterans popped up in reply.

The intrepid Captain GREB, back from a summertime vacation through the Napa wine country, has voiced serious doubts about whether HP is really rebuilding the process to reconfigure PA-RISC servers. He posted a comment to our original item, which might be summarized by his belief that this kind of outside-HP hiring is about 20 years out of date, at least for 3000 engineering:

Outside hiring to work on the MPE kernel?  Maybe in 1986, but not in 2006.

Another HP hardware vet called us to suggest that if this project is for real, it might represent a way to keep the 9x7 hardware owners from getting access to MPE/iX 7.0 — by using the Advant/IRS SSEDIT utility to tell the system it's a 9x8. (This is still an experimental switch, even by The Captain's accounts. But the first try did produce a sucessful boot.)

Of course, any HP revision in the boot procedure would have zero effect on the thousands of HP 3000s absolutely frozen by their owners. No changes, no problems, they say. That might be the temperature HP wants to keep those systems, making the servers ever less capable under new computing requirements. (Or not. It's not really healthy to imagine a vendor so calculating about such a small portion of its customer base.)

In any case, it will be interesting to see if the DICE job posting yields changes to the 3000 community's future. On the bright side, the work may just be to make SS_CONFIG more user friendly, for the day when HP will release it, post-support, to the customer community. One report we heard today said that when HP's own engineers tried to use SS_CONFIG at a customer site, the HP CE was stumped. A call to the HP Response Center was needed. Apparently SS_CONFIG, used to maintain HP PA-RISC servers the world over, has documentation in need of revising.

Come to think of it, maybe that's what the DICE position is all about: making some sense of a trade secret program's documentation.

For several years we've kept track of the IBM alternative to the HP 3000 integrated package. For many years it was called the AS/400, then the iSeries, then the i5, and now, System i. Recently, several items crossed our desk about this server, one whose customers seem as ardent as any HP 3000 fan, dedicated to a longtime solution which is not Windows or Unix-based. (Though the Series i can do Linux, Unix and Windows, with some add-ons)

Item 1: IBM Series i applications often rely on something called 5250 processing capability, a kind of in-the-terminal intelligence. IBM measures this 5250 horsepower, called CPW, and charges a customer accordingly. Your apps need more, you pay extra. The IBM market has responded with software that bypasses the IBM measurements. IBM has followed with suits against several third party firms selling what that market calls "governor-busters." Fast400 was the latest to fall last year, in an out-of-court settlement.

But things change. IBM is now endorsing one of these busters, from Australian company Looksoftware, according to iSeries News. The toolset lookdirect "lets a system's full-batch CPW capability be used for interactive applications — with IBM's blessing."

This a development that seems to mirror one of the bigger questions still before HP 3000 homesteaders: Will HP ever unleash all the horsepower in the N-Class and A-Class servers? If a third-party solution ever emerged to do this, would HP respond with a suit, or support?

HP 3000 migration plans often swing between Windows and HP-UX as target platforms. While plenty of sites want to preserve their applications in a migration, other sites need a new app to replace their 3000 programs. While people say the application decides the platform, some apps — Ecometry comes to mind — are offered on both environments.

Which to choose? The rate of change appears to be on a three-year cycle for Windows customers. HP's estimating it will support its HP-UX version  11i v3 —  coming out late this year — until 2016. That's more than the lifespan for Windows 98, which Microsoft yanked this summer to make a big mess in IT. (Some IT pros would argue that Win 98 has been unusable for some time, but it's still on lots of desktops.)

Server-grade environments will get better long-term treatment, but Microsoft is making sea changes faster than HP plans to de-commission its HP-UX versions. Some have even longer lifespans, according to HP's Mark Silverberg, HP's new Manager of Transition, Consulting and Workshops.

Even while the third party community offers a way to turn a generic PA-RISC server into an HP 3000, the vendor looks to be launching a project to change the process that permits MPE/iX to boot up on such hardware. It seems like an unusual time for HP to be revising boot processes on hardware HP is dropping.

Earlier this month the computer technology job site DICE listed this opening with HP (although the vendor is working through a third party contractor):

HP PA-RISC Kernel Programmer
Skills: Hewlett Packard PA-RISC servers of HP 9000 and HP 3000, BCH (boot console handler)

Job description: We are looking for a core HP programmer with in-depth knowledge of HPKernels. The Ideal candidate should have experience of Hewlett Packard PA-RISC servers of HP 9000 and HP 3000 class which use standard architecture that has been published by HP. PA-RISC 2.0 architecture has standard entry points in the BCH (boot console handler) firmware that calls an area of non-volatile memory called STABLE STORAGE.

The ideal candidate will be responsible for coding following areas of HP Kernel Architecture.

• How the server is configured, such as hardware boot paths, operations etc,
• Maintains a software ID (called SUSAN code) that third party software vendors can key software to
• Maintains software capability code (0x10000001) that specifies number of users and operating system
• Maintains a model string that identifies the servers configuration for example: e3000/A400-100-11
• When hardware fails, the stable storage can wind up being replaced as it resides on the defective component being replaced.

What we need is someone to write a machine code utility that is read in from the BCH prompt that allow us to reconfigure the stable storage configuration to our customer’s original values.

Twelve months after the HP user group Interex folded, its Contributed Software Library (CSL) is not much closer to the hands of those who contributed the programs.

The CSL, once regarded as a prime benefit of corporate Interex membership, fell into the "unreleased assets" pile during the user group's 2005 bankruptcy. The volunteer curator of these programs is still taking care of them, but he doesn't believe he's got a green light yet to make the CSL — in its entirety — a public resource.

Back in 2005, OpenMPE director and former Interex SIG chair Donna Garverick was hopeful about the CSL seeing the light of a new day, or a new year at least, post-Interex. "Regarding the CSL in particular, there are several people working on making the CSL software publically available," she said. "It will take a fair amount of work to get the contributions repackaged so that they are download-friendly. However, before anything can really be made available, 3000 CSL chair Chuck Shimada wants to try to contact the contributors to get their permission to post their works."

Even with contributors contacted, a legal roadblock remains in place, Shimada told us this week.

Interex Special Interest Groups often provided some of the best value from the now-defunct user group. More useful information about HP's plans and help from the community passed in SIG-MPE, SIG-COBOL and SIG-IMAGE rooms, among many of the SIGs, than in any CEO's keynote. Interex didn't embrace SIGs with the same vigor that it showed for Regional User Groups. The lack of specialization in the RUGs, along with their declining volunteer supporters, contributed to the demise of Interex.

Now in the same month when Interex slipped under during 2005, the Encompass user group is bringing one of the Interex SIGs back online, literally. Encompass coordinator Barbara O'Connor reported that SIG Migrate is making a comeback on a browser near you.

Encompass has been working with [Speedware's] Nicolas Fortin to launch SIG MIGRATE under the Encompass umbrella. To officially kick off this SIG, we are holding a launch Webcast on July 26.

An initial online meeting is right in step with what the 3000 community can afford these days. This month's try at 3000 education from MPE-Education.com would have been delivered "the Virtual Classroom Environment that is instructor-led," said instructor Paul Edwards. He added that they'll "try to schedule another class in the fall, after summer vacations are over."

But next Wednesday, Encompass wants you to log in to its first SIG Webcast if you are "thinking about or in the process of migrating off the HP e3000." The user group is calling SIG-Migrate its newest SIG. As I recall, it was one of the newest SIGs in the Interex roster, too.

As Computerworld reminded us yesterday, the HP user group Interex shut its doors in a rush one year ago this week. The user group had decided to go an independent route, rather than let HP steer content in HP World. Part of that content was once training in the basic use of the HP 3000, as well as savvy from experts who cut their IT eye teeth on the system.

Earlier this summer a couple of those experts announced they planned to hold a training session on MPE/iX Fundamentals, the first such class in several years. Like Interex, HP's gotten out of the training business. It's up to independents like Paul Edwards and Frank Alden Smith to step in where an $8 million user group or an $80 billion vendor used to serve education.

Unfortunately the duo's MPE-Education.com effort fell short of finding its paying customers in time for the July 24 start date. Sometimes classes don't "make" because of scheduling conflicts, and other times cost is an issue. Travel couldn't have gotten in the way this time, because MPE-Education.com was offering its classes online.

HP carries more history with it than any other Silicon Valley computer maker. The dedication to history is one reason the HP 3000 lasted as long as it did in HP's business plans; the company cared about its longstanding customers up through November of 2001, even though the platform wasn't bringing in as much growth as others. (Profit is another measure altogether. HP still won't step off its 3000 support track at the end of this year. That business is still plenty profitable, per dollar of revenue received.)

All that HP attention to the past is illustrated in a photo essay out on the Web this month. CNET took cameras for a tour of HP's Page Mill Road headquarters, a building erected in 1960 and preserved in that style even today.

One especially interesting photo was evidence of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard's open door policy. The CNET photographer took a shot showing how the office linoleum in Packard's space had been bleached by the sun coming through the open door.

HP want to open other doors to its 3000 customers today. The 46-year-old HQ building is a memorial to a company and its ideals — inspired work that led to its first general purpose business computer, your system, that sparked the PA-RISC revolution and led to the Unix dreadnought. Alas, the CNET photos of the key products under glass at HP HQ do not include an HP 3000. Only the ThinkJet printer and HP 35 calculator earned a shot. Have a look at the series to recall the HP of the 20th Century.

One year after the merger between connectivity rivals Attachmate and WRQ was completed, the companies have decided this month to do business from here on strictly as Attachmate. Earlier this year the corporation which was once WRQ — and an HP 3000 supplier called Walker, Richer & Quinn starting in 1981 — purchased NetIQ for nearly half a billion dollars.

Now that the NetIQ purchase has cleared its hurdles, the company has dropped the WRQ portion of the AttachmateWRQ name. (NetIQ never got a chance to be tacked onto the company name.) The three companies now boast a $400 million yearly run rate and serve more than 40,000 customers. AttachmateWRQ took NetIQ private, buying up its shares off the Nasdaq exchange.

Aside from the name change — and the addition of NetIQ's products and revenue to this conglomerate owned by an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners — the company assures its WRQ customers nothing else has changed. Support numbers and contact information remains the same. Attachmate operates out of the former WRQ HQ on Dexter Avenue in Seattle, although NetIQ does its business out of Houston.

A few weeks back we introduced the 7.2 version of extend, the COBOL development suite from Acucorp which includes the AcuCOBOL compiler. The company has added some new features in AcuCOBOL to help HP 3000 users looking for a 3000-compatible compiler while moving to a new platform:

In Version 7.2, there were several minor changes added that extend the  HP 3000-specific functionality of our products. These were all designed to improve HP 3000 compatibility with ACUCOBOL-GT and AcuBench, and include the ability to link non-parsable COPY files in graphical Working-Storage.

As we said earlier, Acucorp has been at work longer than any company, with success, at building a compiler that will take on the 3000's COBOL II code with the least number of changes.

In addition, Acucorp's spokesperson Kendra DeWitt gave us a benchmark of how much migration has been happening among its customers from the 3000 to other systems:

We have more than 70 customers worldwide that have migrated from the HP 3000 to a new platform. The majority of these customers are corporate end users. A smaller percentage are ISVs (or companies that use our software in the development of their own software packages). Notable new ISV accounts include Computer & Software Enterprise, Inc. and Software Technology Concepts.

While HP 3000 users wait on details for their 3000-specific conference in Houston, Encompass has added help and incentives for getting your trip approved to September's HP Technology Forum. The Forum costs a good deal more than the GHRUG event — but if you're moving from MPE/iX to HP-UX, Windows or even Linux, your company needs to have training in the budget.

Yesterday Encompass put up its 2006 Session Scheduler, a way to keep your training trip efficient. A detailed schedule might convince your upper management to green-light your training, but the Tech Forum Web site requires a registration before you can start scheduling online. A good public-access catalog, however, can help you build a list of sessions to show your IT director, CFO, president or controller.

If you're not lucky enough to be one of those things for your company, then Encompass has offered a novel tool — new to the 3000 community, anyway. There's a draft letter on the user group's Web site which helps you build a case, and estimate expenses, for the Tech Forum trip. (We note that the total cost might need such a letter, unless you have an well-established training budget.)

There's also a bonus that's expiring in two days: the $100 HP Bucks for registering by midnight Saturday, July 15. As for 3000-specific content, that public catalog lists six sessions. Every one of them covers an aspect of migration, but some are bound to have new information. We are, after all, close to five years into the 3000 Transition Era.

The only 3000-specific user conference for 2006 is starting the public portion of its year, as the Greater Houston Regional User Group (GHRUG) announced that it's looking for speakers for its November event.

The group's Web site won't prop open the door much wider to anyone who wants to deliver a talk on the HP 3000, however. A link to a "Call for Attendees" on the conference page still refers to a one-day event from the fall of 2005; the map of the conference site also contains last year's dates. The 2006 conference dates (Nov. 10-12) and site (University of Houston, Clear Lake campus) have been released for months already.

GHRUG is sponsoring the conference, however, and the group has a board of directors contact page. Richard Pringle is listed as GHRUG president; contact him at [email protected] to submit a paper proposal — until the community gets a little wider doorway into the conference content.

Monday was a black-pencil day for Southwest Airlines, the only US carrier that has maintained black ink on its bottom line for a quarter-century. The airline, whose ticketless reservation system has long been powered by HP 3000 technology, started an experiment yesterday. It assigned seats for its passengers flying from San Diego to Phoenix.

Southwest is famous for its "cattle call" boarding regimen, which some flyers love and others endure. The airline does this to get its passengers on board faster, an efficiency tactic a lot like relying on HP 3000s. Very different, but it works. Aircraft make no money for an airline on the ground, waiting. Airlines make a lot less money taking reservations with agents and issuing paper tickets. While you can still get a live person to take your reservation these days, the purchase always goes into a system that issues no paper ticket. (Unless you want to pay extra.)

Ticketless travel was a 3000-sparked industry innovation, but now Southwest is experimenting with being like everybody else. A few years back the company announced it would be migrating off its HP 3000s, someday, but to the best of our information those systems are still dealing out your tickets. Now those 3000s might be asked to take on a new cargo, so to speak: assigning seats.

A report on today's NPR Morning Edition described the scene at yesterday's San Diego gate for the Southwest flights. "Southwest has no software to assign seats," the reporter said. "So gate agents had to assign seats by hand. In pencil, with plenty of erasing."

Could the Southwest ticket application, first written by Morris Air in the 1980s, then sold to Southwest along with Morris gates and planes and carried into the 21st Century, gain another feature? It would require a positive customer response from that pencil-laden experiment, to begin with. The application under MPE, however, only needs to add one feature. The rest of the app's functionality is proven.

Since HP 3000 users rely on the "ain't broke — don't fix it" maxim, many of these sites still use much older versions of the MPE/iX operating system. Sooner or later these 6.0 and earlier customers find a reason to upgrade — to keep pace with a third party application, fix a problem with network software, or take advantage of FTP features. Whatever the cause, it can seem like a large leap to go from a 1997 OS to one that HP first released in 2002.

It's not a complicated journey, according to HP 3000 support expert Gilles Schipper. The founder of GSA — the oldest third party 3000 support firm in North America — guided a customer through the necessary steps recently.

Schipper shared his experience with the community in a posting on the 3000-L newsgroup:

A. Is 7.5 the latest and last HP 3000 version?

Yes. And PowerPatch 2 is the latest (although not necessarily the last) PowerPatch for 7.5 (I believe).

B. Can I go directly to 7.5 or do I have to go to 6.5, then 7.0 then 7.5?

No, you've got to get onto 6.5 first to make the shift to 7.5.

According to the "HP e3000 MPE/iX System Software Mainteneance Manual (Release C.75.00)" (Order Part No. 30216-90342 E0802), Chapter 3, Page 60, you need to be at minimum Release Version 6.5 to be able to update to 7.5.

If you are on release 6.0, you must first update to 6.5 or 7.0 before you can update to 7.5.

Also, you cannot update to 7.0 or 7.5 with certain older models of HP3000 - such as 9x7 models.

You can get the manual at:

www.docs.hp.com/en/30216-90344/30216-90344.pdf

(The above link downloads a PDF file from HP's server.)

C. Is there a list of changes from 6 to 7.5?

Yes. Best to see the 6.5, 7.0, and 7.5 Communicators:

Tracy Johnson added an important hardware note:

Don't forget to remove any HP-IB cards.

The HP Technology Forum has gained its first bona-fide homesteading session among its HP 3000 content. OpenMPE will have an update session on Tuesday, September 19 starting at 5 PM, according to OpenMPE board member Chuck Ciesinski.

This will be an information session rather than technical instruction about using the HP 3000. OpenMPE is getting what host user group Encompass calls one of its "Campground" meetings, a cousin to the Birds of a Feather or Special Interest Groups in the old Interex model. At least four of the nine OpenMPE board members will be on hand in Houston to recap what's been accomplished through the OpenMPE advocacy and lay out the goals for the group in the near term.

HP virtually put a hold on OpenMPE's goals timetable last December; the vendor's announcement of licensing MPE/iX source came saddled with a two-year delay on that release, since HP stretched its 3000 support business out at least two extra years. But at least two more years will give OpenMPE some time to develop a strategy that might attract membership commitments from homesteading customers — a message the group will now be able to promote at HP's Technology Forum.

The addition of an OpenMPE session signals effort on the part of OpenMPE to reach out to Encompass, too. The enterprise user group, still standing after the Interex collapse of 2005, is welcoming any relationship that might bring more HP 3000 owners into Encompass ranks.

Group president Kristi Browder said last fall that the 3000 customers would have to face the inevitable fact of migration, a challenge the user group can assist with. Some customers will draw up their own definitions of how inevitable their migration is — and perhaps look to Encompass to offer 3000 homesteading support as a new benefit. After all, the group has a dedicated band of Digital customers using VAX systems, VMS and even PDP-11s — all well past the vendor's "end-of-life" dates.

Encompass and HP are turning up the marketing machine for their September HP Technology Forum, putting postcards in mailboxes, sending e-mail to prospects, extending discounts and announcing speakers. An early-bird discount rate runs out at the end of next week for the Forum registration. Meanwhile, the GHRUG conference which opens six weeks after the HP Tech Forum closes is not making a direct play for training and networking expenditures. At least not yet.

The GHRUG three-day event, billed as the only 3000-specific conference for 2006, will be soliciting a formal call for speakers by the end of the summer, according to one report we received this week. The dates are set (Nov. 10-12), as is the venue (U. of Houston Clear Lake), so the travel and "I'll be out of the office" plans can proceed. All that remains is a reason to attend: The content, most important to a 3000 manager looking for help to homestead or begin a migration. The homestead talks will be the most exclusive part of the GHRUG event.

Last year the Tech Forum marketed straight up against Interex and its HP World show. Some Interex veterans said that Smith Bucklin, the conference company that sold the show floor space, used all the leverage HP could provide the Tech Forum as the vendor's official venue. Laying back until the same Smith Bucklin team and Encompass has done its marketing — say, September — might be a strategy to pick up attendees who can't afford the Tech Forum's rates (still more than $900 even with all the available discounts.)

Okay, I admit it; I'm eager to see what the 3000-specific effort will bring to the market. It looks like the customer base may have wait awhile longer to find out, while supporters from the vendor community do, too.

OpenMPE has outlasted another case of an HP pace — the slow, methodical, sometimes overworked pace that reflects the vendor's waning involvement with the HP 3000. More than two years ago, HP made a pledge of $5,000 to OpenMPE, an act of good faith not meant to overwhelm the advocacy group's treasury. The contribution, however, failed to appear at the OpenMPE accounting office, month after month. A public apology last summer from HP's Mike Paivinen, primary contact with OpenMPE, didn't get the money moving any faster, either.

But like OpenMPE's insistence on an answer about releasing source code after HP support quits the platform, the HP funding finally came through a little while ago. In meeting minutes approved in mid-June, the group noted that HP's check had arrived and cleared at last.

The group had to restructure its process to accomodate HP's payment methods. It turns out that HP couldn't make a donation to a for-profit organization. So OpenMPE had to set up a Professional Services Agreement with HP, make out the bill for "market consulting" for $5,000, then wait for the money to show up in a direct invoice payment.

It might have been easy to give up on a pledge more than 18 months old. But OpenMPE is run by IT professionals, people used to dogging down an answer or cornering a solution through repeated attempts. Built to survive on a miniscule budget, the organization can wait for answers instead of going dark, like another HP user organization did one year ago this month.

Here in the US we're celebrating Independence Day. Independence is an essential part of the HP 3000 heritage. Your system was created independent of HP's desires for its business — HP founder David Packard didn't believe a business computer was the right product for his company. Perhaps, in a way, his company has come full circle then, now thinking the HP 3000 isn't right for its business strategies.

Like the engineers and managers who muscled on anyway with the 3000 project, you can think for yourself. If your taste for the menu of change is moderated by your budget — or your memory is long enough to recall how much change can cost in momentum, as well as money — you have an independent option. Don't change anything but your suppliers. Or move slow enough that your change is as subtle as the evolution of the 3000's environment. MPE is software now in its fourth decade, still being changed by its creators.

If staying put is your best business plan, turn your attentions to training. Hone the cutting edge of your tool with consulting to expand the 3000's reach. Call up Paul Edwards or Frank Alden Smith and arrange for a class for your IT staff. Independent training is available, just like independent support and independent depots for systems and parts.

Not all attempts at independence succeed. One year ago this month, 3000 customers heard their user group go bump in the night, falling so it could not get up over its 2004 decision to be indepdendent of HP. The decision to go your own way can be edgy, even if it feels necessary. It can be comforting to remember the fellow rebels out there alongside you, if your path is parting from HP's.

In marketing they call them loss leaders. In the HP training community they call them Webcasts. Encompass, the surviving HP user group representing enterprise customers like 3000 sites, wants to give away an hour of HP-UX training next week, hoping to convince you that six more hours would be worth a trip to Houston in September.

The first hour is free on July 13, when you can go to the Encompass Web site, enter your ID and Password and then select 'Course Catalog' and click on "the July 13th webcast" from Bill Hassell — who's leading a 7-hour pre-conference course at this year's HP Technology Forum.

If you've never taken an Encompass Web course before — and that would probably be most of the HP 3000 community — then you'll have to sign up for "Tips and Secrets for HP-UX Admins" at the Encompass Web site. For just the effort of submitting an e-mail address, and assigning yourself a name and password, you'll be told a lot about simplifying the job of running an HP-UX server, according to Hassell's teaser for his loss leader.