The farther away HP's end of support date gets from the system's present day, the more common become the skills to take the hardware beyond HP's constraints. Its processors were crippled by code in the server that threw away as many as three cycles out of four. HP was attempting to introduce a value chain in the lineup, but the customers soon saw it as chains around PA-RISC chips inside.

Now you don't have to ask around for very long to arrange for the chains to be broken. One prominent consultant said it's been six years since he was asked about any MPE/iX license needs while upgrading one of the servers HP's walked away from. The slowdown reverberates throughout a 3000. Its Fibre Channel drivers require CPU power, so crippling the CPU also cripples the IO.

As common as the practice is off the record, it's also common for companies to say little that can be traced to them in public when they do this to a 3000. The irony in the situation is that the HP 3000s which were released without user-based licenses like the A-Class servers got hobbled. On the upside, nearly every HP 3000 released since 2001 can run faster with a few judicious commands inserted at the ISL prompt.

The payoff? The LTO and LTO2 tape devices could get a streaming role on an N-Class. That server uses a speedier PCI bus than the Series 900 HP 3000s. LTO might seem like antique tech, but it's all relative in the world of the homesteading site.