The First HP 3000 You Can Download
September 7, 2012
We are on the cusp of a milestone here, one that's bigger than the impending start of our 18th year of publication. As part of our desire to help the 3000 community, we hope to be sending out HP 3000s. Virtually, of course. There's never been HP iron or MPE code here in our offices.
We've had an offer to distribute the freeware copies of a new Personal-sized Charon HPA/3000 emulator built by Stromasys. We haven't been shy about the prospects for this product, one that has no competition. One of the experts with the longest tenure in the marketplace, Alan Yeo of ScreenJet, said at this time last year that the emulator has the potential to be a game-changer. It's already taken on the role of a governor — as in the part of an engine which keeps a limit on how fast an auto will barrel forward.
When we last checked in with Yeo, he was saying that the migration business had slowed to almost a trickle in the first half of this year. Six months earlier, he believed that emulator would be giving companies a reason to reschedule their migration plans. A tough economy would be another reason, but having a vision of a virtual 3000, to replace aging iron, would be the newer and more novel element in the postponements.
We've never served up anything off of our web hosts besides video, audio, PDF files and contents of web pages. So being an outlet for these freeware downloads is a new mission for me to manage. I ask your patience if there's a beta period of the downloading process.
The very idea that you'd combine those two elements in a single solution — freeware to make an HP 3000 — shows how far the Web has carried us all to this new brink of virtualization. During the 18 years we've been in business, only one other company ever asked the NewsWire to deliver anything other than information and advice and entertainment.
The last time we got asked the Web was pretty brand-new, and that software had competition which we could not overlook. It's the unique nature of HPA/3000 that makes it possible to say yes this time. That, and how it could change the future for preserving an investment in MPE computing. That said, older iron will sell well. There are surprising values for the physical devices called HP 3000s.
Like the vapors of the Web, it's the substantial, invisible magic of MPE that's going to define owning an HP 3000 in the years to come. I'm already gathering stories for the 3000 Memoir Project, and plenty of them focus on the software that has made the computer great enough to keep running "just a few years longer." Year after year, that's what we hear.
So watch this space for details on how to download your first free HP 3000 off the Web.