A Wiki arrives to teach 3000 skills
December 15, 2006
Chris Bartram, the HP 3000 veteran who's been at the center of the Web and Internet community for the system, has just opened up the first Technical Wiki for users, fans and customers of your redoubtable system.
This Twiki permits any registered user to edit or post articles about the use of the HP 3000. Bartram, a friend to the NewsWire since our newsletter's inception and even before, invited me to post the HP 3000 entry as a way of defining what the whole TWiki will be about.
This is a cutting-edge way to gather information and advice about the 3000 from community experts and veterans. Today, as a way of explaining what's so special about this server, I put up the start of a history of the system, marked with a few high points. Users are already registering to contribute to the 3000's TWiki. You can sign up to edit and post, or simply view the Wiki without registering, at twiki.3k.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/HP3000FAQ
Bartram said he has been working on a way to make the deep knowledge of the 3000's Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file more accessible in a more modern era.
I’ve been working on re-vamping the FAQ for some time; one of the major features I’d been looking for was the ability for others to contribute easily. Easy inter-linking of topics was another. Spreading the topics out a bit (to aid finding things from the search engines) was another. A wiki was a natural choice. “TWiki” was an implementation I found that came highly recommended, and turned out to be pretty easily to install and configure.
I’ve ported most of the current FAQ documents into the new wiki; anyone that’s interested in filling in gaps or adding topics of your own, help yourself! All you need to do is register (which is free and automated) and you can update or add any topic you like.
There’s one link from our home page (www.3k.com) currently; I’ll be replacing the links to the old format FAQ in the coming weeks. There’s no google presence of the new site yet, but it should be crawled and indexed soon.
Since Chris asked, I have started the ball rolling on the definition of what an HP 3000 is:
" The HP 3000 was the first minicomputer — a type of business computer smaller and easier to manage than a mainframe — to include a database from some of its earliest versions onward. This distinction helped to set the stage for success for this system, which boasted 70,000 working systems at its peak in the late 1980s. The HP 3000 continues to work in major corporations and modest-sized companies today, more than 30 years after that database was included."
But you can have your say and edit the start that Chris began and that I've expanded. Register today and help make the 3000 knowledge as easy to consume as the legendary Wikipedia. The technology behind the 3000's TWiki and that online encylopedia are very much the same.