Changes Spark Healthy Adaptations
June 19, 2015
The constant grind of change in the 3000 community -- migrations, the shifting sands of homesteading resources -- may have a positive effect on managers who deal with it. "There is always a future," our ally and contributor Brian Edminster wrote. "It's just not always the future we think we'll have. And that's not always bad, in that it can force us to adapt, to improvise and stretch a bit. These are all signs of a healthy being."
Expanding the use of the HP 3000 in some companies seems outlandish, but it might not be. Not everywhere. In one case we're heard, new ownership of a division that uses a 3000 offered a chance to extend the use of their 3000, rather than just target the system as something to consolidate, maintain, or decommission. The company's mission includes the need to expand in the division's market that their 3000 system was designed for -- and seeing that their other markets' IT solutions won't work as well as the 3000.
Making that choice involves embracing used servers, and eventually emulated hardware. That's an adaptation of hardware sourcing. Independent support has been available a long time to make the former work, and the virtualized 3000s have been for sale for more than three years by now.
Older and common tools can also get adapted, because with this kind of field experience, practical application trumps strategic platform goals. It can happen at the simplest of levels. You might not expect that Notepad++ could become a 3000-related tool. Edminster tells a story about seeing this happen, though.
Its biggest shortcoming is, you guessed it, it's a hassle to get at the files on the 3000 with it. It has no native connection facility, unlike ProgrammerStudio, or Qedit for Windows. At least not without using Samba. And for a site with security concerns and needs, sites who have to comply with PCI standards, Samba is considered a no-no.
The Notepad++ integration with the 3000 would work with a high-cost item like NSF/iX from Quest/Dell. Of course, "the development servers should be the only ones that need to 'mount' the MPE/iX filesystem, so PC tools can access them," Edminster adds, "so perhaps Samba might work in some environments."
He added that the web_dav module of Apache on the 3000 could also provide a way to make Notepad++ a better player with the 3000. Edminster's expertise includes such open source software. Such web_dav use "could be an easy way to get at files on the 3000 from any Mac or PC application. Making that work would make integrating a 3000 into the world of PC workstation apps so much easier."