Virtualized HP servers will be getting slimmer this spring. Stromasys has cornered the market on the emulation software that makes fast Intel systems behave like business servers HP released more than 20 years ago. The Stromasys Charon product is sitting on an announcement that it's getting a new version for its Digital customers, one that reduces the need for a Linux installation separate from the Stromasys software.

The HPA version of Charon, which emulates PA-RISC 3000s, is getting a speed upgrade in a few months, according to the vendor's head of communications Isabelle Jordain. But in the meantime, a new Backbone version of the company's VAX emulator is rolling out. The configuration is designed to increase stability as it simplifies configuration. 

CHARON-VAX Barebone brings the same security and peace of mind as traditional Charon solutions  — but with a Linux microkernel embedded in the Charon software. Barebone uses only the essential components of the Linux OS, increasing your data center's stability and performance, while eliminating your OS license cost.

Emulator solutions ride in a cradle of Linux in the generation sold to 3000 customers. While the Charon-HPA will do so for the foreseeable future, it's got a shot at eliminating the need to mount up a Linux host environment. This Backbone edition runs emulation without a need for the tuning and maintaining of Linux licenses and support fees.

The VAX customer still can count on support in the future for their OpenVMS software. HP's making an intellectual property transfer to a third party of VMS. But that independent support of a business server OS is something HP 3000 customers are experiencing, too. Third parties making a business of handing both hardware and software needs for servers built 10 to 20 years ago. There must be something crucial in such systems for the customers using them.

We're opening up a new page for the NewsWire's site as part of our all-digital transition. The community's consultants and contractors have been posted for more than five years at the OpenMPE News blog, which I've maintained and administered. Now the listing of independent and company-based consultants from that website is online at this page at the NewsWire's site.

The list gained a new member recently, so there are still computer pros emerging who seek places to help the homesteading community members. If you're a consultant and you're not on our page, we'd be happy to extend you a place there, or update your listing from the OpenMPE News site. Email us your particulars, or include them in a comment below. Be sure to give us the snail-mail and phone contacts, since location can be important to some customers seeking expertise. A few lines on what you do will be helpful.

We've also got some unverified listings from prior to 2013 among the resources on the page. If you're in that category and would like to update us, send a note and any changes.

Some companies have wide-ranging nets of engagements they'd like to attract. But among our community, there's no one writing support contracts who focuses exclusively on the 3000 but Pivital Solutions. "It's our only business," says president Steve Suraci.

Some individuals are on the lookout for full-time, part-time, or temporary jobs at 3000-using companies. For example, we heard from one 3000 pro who offered his listing to the OpenMPE blog earlier this year.

When an HP 3000 of the ultimate generation developed trouble for Tom Hula, he turned to the 3000 newsgroup for advice. He'd gotten his system back up and serving its still-crucial application to users. But even after a restart, with the server looking better, things just didn't seem right to him. 

I am concerned, since I don't know what the problem was. It almost reminded me of something I used to call the Creeping Crud, where people started freezing up all over the place, while some people were still able to work. The only thing was a reboot. But in this case, it seemed worse. Only a few people on our 3000 now, but we still depend on it for a high-profile application. What should I check?

The most revealing advice came from Craig Lalley, who told Hula he'd try a Control-B into the 3000's system log. The steps after the Control-B command are SL (for System Log) and E (for Errors only.) Typing CO puts the 3000 back in console mode. Hula's system had lost its date and time on one error, and the Alert Levels showed a software failure along with lost boot functionality.

But amid the specifics of eliminating the Creeping Crud (it may have been a dead battery) came sound advice on how to prepare for a total failure and where to look for answers to 3000 hardware problems. The good news on the battery is that it's not in a Series 9x7. Advice from five years ago on battery replacement pointed to a hobbyist-grade workbench repair. More modern systems like Hula's A400 at least have newer batteries.

This afternoon on a Wednesday Webinar, IT managers were watching what advanced software can do to move the identity of a company. A company knows itself by its data. When transforming IT to a new generation, data's got to move, even if it's just to another generation of HP server. More likely, that shift will eventually be leading to a more comprehensive change: a new environment, new server, new database, new application.

Moving the application is an exercise that requires custom work, the sort of programming, development and testing that'll emerge from a team inside a 3000 shop, plus some help from outside. But moving to a new database demands the checking of database schemas, the review of naming conventions, and more. Carrying a company's identity from a TurboIMAGE database to Oracle or SQL Server has been viewed as a complex task for a long time.

It looked a lot less complex during today's demo of MB Foster's UDA Central. Choosing source databases, then selecting a target database of another type, was straightforward. More importantly, this software ensures that data makes its move in a way that delivers a useable resource, not one overrun with table errors and illegal dataset names. Warnings before the data's moved keep the identity of the company clear. There's a default data mapping between databases that's done automatically to get database administrators and managers started quickly.

Watching the software in action made me realize how far we've come in the task of making transformations to our IT enterprises. There was once a Computerworld reporter who asked me what barriers IBM might have to overcome if it stood a chance of converting HP 3000s to AS/400 sites. Well, those databases, I said to him. "You might move the applications or replace them. But the data's got to remain the same."

Database tools have evolved far enough now, 20 years later, that UDA Central's got everyday uses, not just a one-time utility. It's got operations for data stores, for pulling data out for analytics, and more. Those analytics are crucial. Birket Foster said that "If you've never done data analytics, you don't really have clean data." The company's experience with customers moving data taught MB Foster that, he explained.

Around midday tomorrow, up-to-date instruction about migration will be offered on a webinar. The presentation is not about the platform and app migration that has galvanized your community. It's even more important, because everybody will need to do this migration. The movement is as undeniable as the tides. Data's got to be moved, because things improve as they change.

It's employing something better and more efficient to handle data — that's what sparks this migration.

At 2 PM EST in the US (11 AM Pacific) MB Foster's showing off the means to migrate HP 3000 data. For about 45 minutes, an interactive Q&A deals with the strategy and processes to move databases, a trip that can lead to MS SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and other targets. UDA Central is the means, but the advice goes farther than a straightforward product walkthrough.

You can sign up at the MB Foster website. The meeting gives a manager the opportunity to gather with some like minds. One of the most rewarding parts of a these Wednesday Webinars, as the company calls them, has been getting on the line with other managers. User group meetings used to be the only way to hear about best practices from community members.

For example, answers to these questions will be up for consideration this afternoon:

• How many internal resources are directly involved on a daily basis to extract, transform, migrate and supply supporting data for your organization?
• How much time and effort goes into this process?
• How can you speed up data delivery, reduce the time, effort and internal cost related to data migration?

Data migration is always about transformation, whether the target is outside the MPE realm or not.

The long-sought MPE source code arrived in your community five years ago this month. Hewlett-Packard released CDs filled with millions of lines of Modcal and SPL, shipping them off to eight companies who'd paid $10,000 each for the resource. Companies including 3000 specialist Pivital Solutions, as well as corner-case outliers such as Ordat (makers of a TurboIMAGE middleware tool), as well as the ubiquitous Adager and Allegro earned the right to explore and adapt the 3000's heart and soul.

Hopes were sky-high when the source code quest began in 2002. Just a matter of weeks after Hewlett-Packard pulled its own plug on 3000 futures, a new organizaton called OpenMPE took up the pursuit of those lines. The ideal was to find a way to extend the life of MPE/iX beyond HP's plans. The maker of the 3000 had other ideas. Its goal was to cut off further development of 3000 resources.

Better fortune took eight more years to arrive, and even then the 3000's source rolled into vendor shops with a major restriction. To use the code legally, a licensee had to promise they wouldn't try to move MPE/iX beyond its ultimate 7.5 release. No new generation of the 3000 OS. By 2010, 7.5 had seen no significant advance for three years. The initial 7.5 release, sans PowerPatches, was eight years old.

But the vendors who earned the right to apply their skills and experience to that code, continue to distinguish themselves in the support and development sectors. Neil Aemstrong of Robelle summed up the advantage. "Seeing the source and reading it is certainly a large part of being able to develop patches and potentially avoid any issues," he said. "It may not be perfect, but it helps."

In addition to the above-named Pivital, Adager and Allegro, Beechglen, Neil Harvey & Associates, and Terix entered the elite source-ready roster. All but Terix remain in your community today. HP has standards for its licensees, and some (like Pivital) were even invited to join this cadre. One more license was assigned, but Open MPE couldn't complete its arrangements.

While an HP 3000 might be an overlooked resource at some companies, it's still mission-critical. Any server with 40 years of history can be considered essential if it's still part of a workflow this year. Managers of 3000s don't automatically think of protecting their essential resource from the malware and hackers of 2015, though.

That was illustrated in a recent thread on the 3000 newsgroup traffic. A 3000 manager serving the Evangelical Covenant Church needed help restarting an old Series 9x7. (By definition, any Series 9x7 is old. HP stopped building this first generation of entry-level 3000s more than 20 years ago.) The manager said the 9x7 had been "in mothballs," and he wanted to run an old in-house app.

I was able to boot up and login as OPERATOR.SYS but cannot remember/find the password for MANAGER.SYS. Is there anyway to reset, clear, or overwrite the password file? I know the old machine is a very secure one, but now I am hoping there is a way around it.

And then on the newsgroup, advice on how to bypass 3000 security began to emerge. It surprised one consultant who's recently closed down a big 3000 installation full of N-Class servers. Should the community be talking about how to hack a 3000, he wondered? The conversation really ought to be about how to ensure their security, practices we chronicled a few years ago.

The highest price for any HP 3000 rolled into your community 25 years ago this month. HP announced its biggest system ever, a computer with designs of competing with IBM mainframes. Not many technical details were available in the New York City rollout, but one had everybody looking skyward. Here on a Throwback Thursday, we chronicle the Series 980 with two processors that would cost $1,090,000.

HP could have priced the system at $100,000 less, but why bother? A million dollars was part of the point. Its target was not really the 3000 customer who'd built their IT operations on servers that cost less than half of the 980/200. Hewlett-Packard hoped the fastest PA-RISC system that it'd ever designed could displace some of the multi-million-dollar systems IBM had been selling for more than a decade, probably even 20 years.

Oh, there was mention of upgrading to the big box from the Series 950 systems, the first computers from HP's MPE/XL RISC era that were actually fast enough to power through a very green operating system's overhead. No upgrade pricing was available at the 980's announcement, though. The specifications of the biggest server seem quaint compared the computing of today. You could put a full gigabtye — yes, 1 GB — into a million-dollar HP 3000. And storage? Wow, a full 85 GB, using the newest Fiber Optic linked drives. 

The drives would be extra, and so that full-bore storage would top out at about the capacity of three thumb drives of today. Yes, a whole $67.40 worth at Walmart. HP had another deal, VPlus Windows for PC-based application screen services, and NewWave System Services, at no extra charge. Programmers had to translate their existing application forms file into a PC forms file for use on the PC. A PC running the mostly-stable Windows 3.0.

There was genuine and durable innovation coming out of HP in that month of March. The world's first DAT tape drives were being shipped. Backup would never be the same. "The tapes, the size of a credit card, are intended to adopt the middle ground between quarter-inch tape and nine-track tape drives."

On Monday we updated our community on some migrations away from 3000s in the education sector. One of our favorite readers, Tim O'Neill, was a touch dismayed at the exodus. We reported four migrations in all, working off of the news from the vendor's (QSS) website. But that was enough to elicit a forlorn, "Isn't there anybody out there still enjoying the service of their 3000?"

Yes, there is, and we've heard from some of them recently. Earlier this month I posted a notice about the birthday of the NewsWire's founding concept on LinkedIn. We first dreamed it in March of 1995. Among the congratulations were some passing remarks about 3000 durability. Just another one came in today, from Tom Moore in the UK. "I suspect we all look a lot older," he said, "but I just do not feel it. I still have a 3000 running behind me. It runs our accounts."

The HP 3000s are still doing their vital work at Measurement Specialities, the manufacturer with operations in the US and in China. MANMAN is serving in its second decade at that company. Terry Simpkins, IT manager there, just reported that he's hired new staff for his 3000 development team.

There's a nice nest of 3000-using companies in the world. They don't provide much news copy, because much of what they're doing has been proven a long time. But the system's biggest, most devoted fans still want to hear something from a successful installed base.

What is the patch that installs Posix? I seem to have a corrupt version of Posix.

Donna Garverick of Allegro replies:

These are your instructions for MPE/iX 5.5 and 6.0.

Load the 5.5 or 6.0 FOS tape on a tape drive. For this example, tape drive on ldev# 7 is used. Log on as MANAGER.SYS

:FILE T;DEV=7
:RESTORE *T;@.HP36431.SUPPORT,I0036431.USL.SYS;CREATE;SHOW
:STREAM I0036431.USL.SYS

Please note:

• HP36431 is the master product number of the Posix 2 Shell.
• I0036431.USL.SYS is the installation file.
• When launched, the job I0036431 should run for less than 5 minutes. When it is done, the Posix environment is re-installed.

[Gilles Schipper notes the process for 7.5 is the same, working from the MPE/iX 7.5 FOS tape.]

I have access to a Tandberg Data Ultrium LTO 3 tape drive. It has a SCSI Ultra160 interface. Would I have any luck hooking one up to an N-Class?

Chad Lester of MPE Support Group replies:

It's worth trying. You might have issues with the dual-port SCSI cards. Also, make sure the firmware is the latest on the single SCSI U160 card.

HP 3000 managers who are still looking at migrations might be sizing up replacement hardware. It's getting a little old-school to think of installing a standalone server to replace something in the 3000's ultimate generation like an A-Class. Using a cloud-based server, or just a partition on an HP-UX or a Windows Server, is a more nouveau choice. Eventually, HP-UX will have that desert island feel to it. You can survive, but getting off it will take quite a swim.

Clouds and partitions aside, smaller companies might want to keep their architecture rather than transforming it during a migration. Their planning includes trying to calculate how much box needed to replace an HP 3000. There's good news. Moving out of the HP-hamstrung MPE/iX environment opens up performance room. It's a widely-recognized fact that the A-Class 3000 systems, and just about all of the N-Class servers, aren't running as fast as they could.

In the past -- at least 10 years ago -- HP actually told 3000 customers this hobbling was a benefit. Something about "preserving the customer's investment" by hobbling the PCI-based systems, so the customers using older and more costly systems wouldn't feel so left out. It was never logical to think anything could be preserved through hobbling except the status quo.

Back in 2005 when the president of a 3000 app vendor gave a migrating A-Class user tips on how to size up a new box. During that year at QSS -- where the vendor has been replacing HP 3000s with Linux installs of a new Oasis app for its K-12 and education sector customers -- Duane Percox offered a migrating user advice on sizing up a replacement. His answers back then compared a 3000 to HP's Unix servers, but the notes on the 3000's shortcomings are still valid. The advice began with a warning: You might not have as much HP 3000 power to replace as you think you do.

Our spring 2002 story reported the fate of slow-growth product lines. Commodity solutions became HP's go-to strategy. This year's HP split aims to return focus to enterprise computing solutions.

Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina pushed herself to the front of news again, as a story in the New York Times chronicled her campaign against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Fiorina has spent the last several years aiming criticism at Clinton, including a recent swipe that attempts to smear Clinton's travels around the world.

"Like Hillary Clinton, I too, have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles around the globe," Fiorina said, "but unlike her, I have actually accomplished something.” The claim recalled memories of Fiorina's most lasting accomplishment from her HP days: hawking a merger that pushed out the values and influence of the Hewlett family.

Thirteen years ago this week, a raucous stockholder showdown in Delaware ended with Fiorina's forces victorious, approving the Compaq merger. Walter Hewlett, son of HP founder Bill Hewlett, contested the vote in a lawsuit. HP directors on Fiorina's team responded by refusing to nominate Hewlett to keep his seat on the HP board.

Many actions of that period were designed to make HP bigger. Low-growth product lines were cut or de-emphasized, most particularly in the HP 3000 world. Despite the efforts to puff up HP, though -- and continue revenue growth to satisfy shareholders -- the plan had no effect on stock value. By the time Fiorina was fired in a board move -- 10 years ago this month -- HP shares sold in the low $20s, just as they did on the day of that Delaware merger victory.

Those inflated accomplishments of her go-go strategy were not misunderstood by the Times writer. "Her business career ended... in one of the more notorious flameouts in modern corporate history," Amy Chozick wrote today. "After orchestrating a merger with Compaq that was then widely seen as a failure, she was ousted in 2005."

The failed merger with Compaq did give HP a product with some foothold in 3000 migration projects, though. The ProLiant servers from Compaq are competitive with Dell and Lenovo systems for installations of Windows Server, the most-chosen alternative to HP 3000s.

Fiorina's tone has been strident, much as it was during her tenure when the 3000 was cut loose by HP. She's most recently tried to assert Clinton has stolen concepts and intellectual property from her.

Last summer the new owners of PowerHouse invited the customer base, including HP 3000 sites, to a meeting at Unicom Systems company headquarters. At that time, the venerable automated development tool had only been in the Unicom strategy for about five months. Later this month, those users and the PowerHouse Advisory Board will meet again. This time the meeting will span a handful of user bases.

The March 27 gathering is at the PickFair mansion in Beverly Hills. That movie-industry icon is also a property of Unicom Global, the parent corporation of Unicom Systems. In the months since the PowerHouse acquisition, Unicom has also purchased the customers and products from four other former IBM operations. The latest, announced at the start of this year, was IBM’s Rational brand, which includes the Focal Point product portfolio and Program Management solution, along with the PurifyPlus dynamic Software Analysis Tools solution.

The scope of these purchases is significant for an enterprise software company. Company officials said the Rational acquisition expanded Unicom’s business by adding more than 2,000 enterprise customers in over 40 countries.

Unicom's 2014 event was for PowerHouse customers exclusively, since the other four IBM properties hadn't been acquired yet. But this month's invitation-only event is being called TeamBLUE, with PowerHouse users joining the Rational customers; users of solidDB, an in-memory relational database; and Unicom Finance, an analysis solution that was called Cognos Finance before Unicom acquired it.

The company said in its backgrounder on the meeting that "TeamBLUE represents a dramatic shift in the approach of leveraging technology assets to deliver leadership in your business, transforming technology discussions into management consulting."

Data integration vendor and legacy app migration supplier MB Foster has announced a new strategic partnership with the owners of the PowerHouse app development suite. Unicom Systems, which purchased the PowerHouse suite of tools in 2014, will work alongside MB Foster to serve the software's users in the US and Canada.

The deal calls for MB Foster to sell, license and distribute PowerHouse 4GL, PowerHouse Web and Axiant 4GL. Unicom is launching its expansion of the PowerHouse reseller network with the deal. MB Foster will also undertake application and product migration, re-integration, and consulting services within Canada and with selected USA-based clients 

Before IBM's 2007 acquisition of the Cognos Corporation and PowerHouse, MB Foster had a development relationship that included the interfacing of MB Foster’s UDALink for the HP 3000 with the PowerHouse PDL dictionary. MB Foster was working with Cognos to facilitate the transition of licenses to new platforms following Hewlett-Packard's announcement in 2001 to end sales of the HP 3000.

"The new partnership with Unicom Global enables us to continue a long-term commitment to PowerHouse users," said MB Foster’s founder, president and CEO Birket Foster. "We are committed to their use of it and the ability to continue leveraging robust capabilities of a 4th Generation Language.

News surfaced this morning about the landmark tech blog Gigaom. The New York Times reports that the massive operation switched off its news reporting in a rush sometime yesterday. The halt of news and postings was as swift as the one Interex experienced almost 10 years ago. Like the user group's demise, unpaid bills were Gigaom's undoing.

Gigaom was big enough to produce conferences. It also offered a white-paper research business. And like the NewsWire, it sold advertising. None of that was enough to keep away Gigaom's creditors. In an echo of what happened at the 3000's final user group that focused on the server, big was no protection against borrowing.

The Times story quoted the site's founder Om Malik in a confirmation statement. "Gigaom is winding down and its assets are now controlled by the company’s lenders,” he said. “It is not how you want the story of a company you founded to end."

One commenter asked, "What does this mean for upcoming events like GigaOM Structure Data next week?" Indeed, like the Interex meltdown, GigaOm has many commitments to keep and by now the lenders are taking control of operations. The scope of failure is similar to the HP World show that never opened in August, 2005. More than $300,000 in tickets were sold to this month's GigaOM conference. There's no word on refunds. For the moment there's no announcement of bankruptcy, though.

All-digital was the only platform GigaOM ever used to spread information. One comment suggested that tech journalists are writers who couldn't make it elsewhere in publishing. That's too broad a brush considering the number of online tech writers. But it's easy to fill a digital outpost with opinions and little news.

The caliber of content is important. So is a manageable mission. Being small and profitable has been the watchword for nearly all of the 3000 vendors and companies since I got here, more than 30 years ago. All of us have been managing risk in what's clearly a contracting market. Gigaom's shutdown is the sort of outcome an IT manager might experience if an app vendor went dark overnight.

Companies and organizations which depend on 3000s are seeing a new generation of answers to the classic question, "How much horsepower do I need in my system?" The prior generation's questions were limited to the official, HP-branded hardware for running MPE and IMAGE. Even a performance expert in the community would sometimes reply, "It depends."

This year the same kind of answer can be heard when a company's trying to replace an HP 3000 -- with non-HP hardware that can run MPE software. The Charon virtualization engine, the emulator, will run on a dizzying array of servers, powered by a raft of CPUs. Choosing the best one is just as particular a decision as it ever was, although the range of right answers is greater.

We learned about this matchup challenge when a reader asked what range of hardware installation might serve their A-Class MPE/iX requirements. In other words, how much Intel-based server do I need to procure to match the performance of HP's PA-RISC server? From the Stromasys VP of engineering, we learned this weekend that, as in the great technical tradition, it depends.

"It depends upon what you are trying to do," said Bill Pedersen. "I run different Charon cross-platform virtualized systems on a laptop for development and demos."

"It depends" is an answer that is rarely wrong. And indeed, seeing Charon for the 3000 run for the first time is usually a demonstration launched on a laptop. We've seen the demos trigger slack-jawed amazement. However, a production-grade system demands a great deal more server. How much depends on what you'd like to emulate: not just the hardware itself, but the demands of your software application, too.

The hardware investment level I like to toss back as an answer is not more than $15,000. But that's really a midpoint, accounting for fast and redundant disk, ample IO, responsive DRAM. In short, everything that HP wired into its 3000 hardware, albeit for a much higher price.

What's obvious is that specifying MPE-ready hardware isn't any less crucial than it ever was. But buying improvements on the horsepower is less costly. Additional Intel-based CPU servers are a commodity item, after all.

We're all-digital now here, so we are working harder at providing resources that can only be served up online. In our archives we've got articles that exist only on paper, and so the transfer of these into digital becomes a way to preserve what we've learned. Even articles of more than two decades ago contain good logic about preservation of IT resources.

One look at news of a springtime more than 20 years ago yielded a couple of articles worth preserving. We've already shared the outlook of HP's Glenn Osaka on the 3000's future, circa 1993. A little deeper in that same issue of the HP Chronicle lay a greater treasure: A forecast for the system from Wirt Atmar, the late founder of AICS Research. Atmar was a tireless advocate for MPE, the 3000, and maybe most importantly, the IMAGE database. "The HP 3000 does only one thing, but it does it very well," Atmar wrote in The Future of the HP 3000.

A search for a Web page with the article didn't turn up any hits, so we're putting it into the NewsWire's resources. The article is a PDF available here. 

In a wide-ranging two-part article from January and February of 1993, Atmar taught us all how an integrated IMAGE database provides the essential value for MPE systems. The good news about all of this is that it's software integration, so even the Stromasys Charon emulation of 3000s retains this benefit. IMAGE made the 3000 a success, and it continues to do so for the companies who still rely on the server.

The success of the HP 3000 is, and always has been, tied to the success of IMAGE. The machine and database have prospered as an indivisible unit. Although MPE is an absolutely superior operating system for business development, it is not strong enough to support the continued existence of the HP 3000 by itself. If IMAGE should disappear, the death of the HP 3000 will soon follow.

Although HP announced its impending death of its 3000 plans about nine years after that article, the 3000 itself has not died. In fact, after Atmar's articles, HP changed its plans to separate IMAGE from the 3000. The bundling of the database and its hardware was preserved. But IMAGE has always been — and always will be — bundled with MPE.

That's the important pairing which Atmar's article chronicles. It explains that the combination "has never been anything than an electronic substitute for steel filing cabinets." Those are the essential kind of furnishings you'll find in offices to this very day.

20 years ago this month, HP took its first steps into an affordable midrange for its Series 9x9 HP 3000s. During the same March, we decided to take our initial steps toward creating a specialized newsletter to serve what showed a glimmer of becoming a revived community.

The 9x9s, known as the Kittyhawk boxes, made their debut in 1994, but the initial models were no long-term bargain for the typical midrange customer. Inside our house, we had worked for two years to serve the information needs of the vendors in a marketplace that the entrenched publications were ignoring. The 3000 was dead, or dying quickly, the editors told us. And so, despite rousing writing and media outreach for software and hardware companies, telling the stories of 3000 success, nobody wanted to devote an editor's attention or the printed space to report that news.

Our independent marketing communications work was hitting a wall of disregard in the industry about MPE and the 3000. In a meeting over coffee in March, my wife and partner Abby Lentz said, "This market might be getting smaller, sure. But some businesses thrived in the Depression, didn't they? Let's do a newsletter."

Ever the sunbeam of my life, she proposed something that seemed outlandish. A dozen issues a year? Specialized publications like the HP Chronicle and Interact knew about focusing on HP, sure, but they were reducing space for 3000 stories. What good could come of selling a monthly pub that would have to try to find more than a dozen news items each month about the legacy system in HP's lineup? Who'd pay for something like that?

But those vendors who knew us had thousands upon thousands of 3000 customers out there, though. And thousands of messages a month on the 3000-L mailing list rolled through my AOL account. The spring of 1995 uncovered a rocky field to try to put down any seeds of hope, though.

HP 3000s have the ability to communicate with iPads, although the inverse is even more true. The software that makes this possible is in regular use at an ecommerce company in the US. A seasoned manager at the company checked in with us, on her way to setting up a link between an Ecometry box and Apple's tablet.

Chris McCartney of Musical Fulfillment reached out for assistance with configuring her 3000 and the TTerm Pro app from Turbosoft. Musical Fulfillment is the parent company to American Musical Supply, zZounds.com, ElectricGuitar.com, and SameDayMusic.com

Once McCartney located a back copy of the Newswire, she says, she found Jon Diercks article about the app when the software was first released in 2013. "We've been using Red Prairie Direct Commerce (aka Ecometry, Escalate, MACS) for more than 10 years and we moved to the [N Class] several years ago. We were hoping to get a few more years out of it before we had to make a decision to upgrade or move to a different ERP system."

By deploying TTerm Pro, McCartney now has a mobile way to check on the status of that N-Class server.

I am up and running on my iPad for those ‘just in case’ times when I am away from my office or laptop and I need to log in to check something on the 3000 or in Ecometry/JDA Direct Commerce. I am going into work over the VPN and using TTerm Pro to connect to our HP. I use the on-screen keyboard, but might switch to a wireless keyboard, so I have a little more screen and the comfort of a physical keyboard.

The 3000 at the company is established as a sensible solution. Up to now, there's been no compelling return on the investment to move to Ecometry hosted on Windows systems.

HP 3000s around the world are running with old fashioned releases of software. Until a problem arises with those tools, platforms, or applications, it's not a problem. At least, it's not one to bother the budget officers at the users' organization. It's also an education in paying now, or paying later.

But come up with something odd, and a user might get an solution for a problem that will ripple the waters of IT budgets. On the PowerHouse user group mailing list, an enterprise server manager asked about an issue with subfiles. In time, the solution seemed to be adopting the newest version of PowerHouse.

Oops. Whether that version would repair the trouble or not, making a move to PowerHouse 8.40G wasn't going to fit on the manager's workbench budget. This wasn't the challenge of paying for a user license upgrade. The expense for this enterprise HP server site would be all in the testing.

Truth is, using a more current version is not really an option. PowerHouse is only used for our legacy apps, and management will never expend the time and effort to do all the testing we would have to do to install a new version. 

This kind of support solution can be a signal for starting a migration in earnest. If you've got a bug that only a new version of the software can fix, and there's a testing budget to approve, an IT manager can figure out which battle to fight. Neither is without costs. But one of the solutions is long-term. The homesteader just watches for the next bug to fix.