Annotations to Migrations
Ike bypasses HP's datacenters

3000 instruction survives in novice articles

Filesfig1 Long before HP decided to end its HP 3000 business, Hewlett-Packard wanted to teach the world how to use the system. One leading instructor wrote two dozen articles on the nuances of the MPE/iX system. George Stachnik created The HP3000 — For Complete Novices, a series first published in Interact magazine.

Interact is long gone, a casualty of the Interex bankruptcy three years ago. But 3000 users rave over these articles, which Stachnik wrote for HP and the Interact editors. He's been generous enough to share his originals, unedited, with us here at the NewsWire. We are working at getting these online, available in MS Word format just as he submitted them.

For this weekend we're passing along one article at random, an instruction on getting rid of HP 3000 files, both temporary and permanent. This is the kind of maintenance that can make an HP 3000 faster to the touch and demand less of its mass storage. The article is also a great example of the expertise which HP reminds you is on the wane in your community.

While HP 3000 owners work to migrate, plan their transition or remain on the platform, they need to pass on basics like those covered in these articles. It's a measure of Stachnik's devotion to the 3000 community that he's made these available.

Perhaps also, the articles show a resilience of the intelligence of the 3000 community. What was once lost, or relegated to paper archives only, can be recovered and distributed online with the help of the 3000's friends. Everything in life is temporary, but if you live in the now, it all looks permanent.

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