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Posted
by
timothy
from the thinning-the-herd dept.
jacexpo069 writes: "You can find it here , however, the highlights are
HP Omnibook, HP Kayak, HP Vectra, HP Jornada and HP Netserver all being phased out. TRU64 phased out, however OpenVMS lives on. Read all the gory details in this detailed roadmap "
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Decision: The Compaq iPAQ(TM) Pocket PC, re-named the HP iPAQ Pocket PC, will be our smart handheld platform. The best of the current HP Jornada technology will be engineered into the platform. Jornada products will be phased out of the market in 2002."
Good to know that they were smart about their handheld lines and decided to stick with the iPAQ (not that there was really much doubt, but...). The iPAQs have been on the leading edge of things for a while now, if they would only integrate something more than SD (and *not* CF type I like the Jornadas had) into the unit...
HP-UX is the second worst UNIX I've ever been forced to use (SCO being the worst). I used to go into screaming fits every time I had to log into a HP-UX box because the damn thing didn't even support tty modes correctly.
At least OSF/1-Tru64 (at one time) had good release engineering. But it started going downhill fast once DEC started massive layoffs.
Actually, I sortof like HP-UX. The LVM and HA software is among the most trouble free implementations I've ever come across. Compiling stuff is a PITA tho, and whoever is responsible for the include files seems to have a fetish for disabling anything and everything common to modern UNIX unless you set several defines to get through it.
It's definitely gotten better in HP-UX 10 and 11; the releases before that were horrible. It still has some really annoying behaviour tho... memory allocation and reboot-on-changing-kernel-parameters, altho that's changed in 11i for some of it at least.
If SAM were a decent graphical admin tool, I might agree with you, but by the gods it so is not. I believe that HP-UX is the oldest commercial UNIX (aside from AT&T) and it shows in its Byzantine presentation and operation. I've worked with AIX, Digital Unix, Solaris, BSD back when it wasn't Free, Net, or Open. The only commercial UNIX so intentionally thickheaded that I'd use HP-UX over it is SCO, which makes makes HP-UX look like a sysadmins wet dream.
Gaaack. Disksuite really really *really* sucks if you're managing anything more advanced than mirroring the root disks. It isnt a LVM, which is the problem.
Trust me, if you have 10 or more disks on a system, you dont want to pull out the system documentation to make sure the slices you want to use are unused. And then meticulously compare it with the current system configuration in case one of your fellow admins has been slack in updating the docs. When you get many disks, you _have_ to have a logical volume manager, so you can just add a disk to a volume group and extend the logical volumes on it, without mucking around with diskslices.
Disksuite just doesnt cut it for anything but the most simple configurations.
I mean exactly that. With disksuite you have to care about slices. With an LVM you dont.
For example, on a small server with two disks. You get 2 36GB disks, and at least our standard configuration sucks up 5 slices as swap plus various filesystems (all mirrored). Then you have the metadatabase replicas taking up another slice, plus the backup slice. Oops, used all my slices, which means I cant extend any filesystem later on, nor can I add more mountpoints. Which means I have to make the final configuration at once and I have no flexibility to change anything afterwards.
And on a large server you get the opposite problem; either you get too many slices everywhere since you have to have a new slice for every time you extend a filesystem, or you get loads of unused space for major additions that turned out to be unnecessary. On a large server with more than a hundred mountpoints, that makes quite a lot of slices, which makes it pretty unmanageable. It's painful even with LVM.
Oh, and hot spares we dont use, since we have FC disk. It's already raid plus hotspare, and mirrored on the host on top of that.
Disksuite simply doesnt compare to a real LVM. It works for setting up mirroring, but it just doesnt cut it when you need more flexibility. You just dont want to deal with slices at all when you get complicated consolidated larger servers.
he ony issue I saw with TRU/64 (OSF/1 at the time) was DEC wanted $10,000 for the license to use it, and that only bought you a bare bones 2-user license. For the same $10K, you could get yourself VMS. They didn't want to cannibalize their VMS market, so they made their UNIX line suffer in the process. I didn't have many complaints about TRU/64, and I'd safely say it was one of my more favorite commercial UNIX implementations (Sun OS being the one I cut my teeth on and my favorite of them all). HP-UX is a real pain in the ass to develop on because nothing is in a standard location, and their compiler leaves much to be desired. I've never seen a commercial repository for GNU software where you absolutely had to use it to get the software to work until I saw HP-UX.
Yes. It was originally OSF/1 (HP and IBM had participated in OSF, but dropped out before shipping their own implementations (they bailed after the looming Sun/AT&T alliance fell apart)). DEC later renamed it Digital UNIX, then marketing guys decided it should be called Tru64 UNIX right before the Compaq buyout.
Thought that DEC's first unix ran on pdp/vax/decstation's as ULTRIX. Then, with the HP/IBM alliance, it became OSF, and finally TRU64. Or do I have it screwed up?
Amen. Having extensive VMS experience on your resume is definately a way to get yourself noticed. Even in a job where there is no VMS. People seem to remember it.
Thats a really insightful question. I wouldn't even want to hazard a guess to the general answer (being a mathematician, rather than a social psychologist;) ). I can, however, tell you why *I* am a DEC fanatic. Its based purely on sentiment.
The first 'real' computer I cut my teeth on was a VAX 11/780. It was such a wonderful piece of machinary. I remember a distinct excitement present in exploring the the system... marvelling at the architecture... fighting (and often winning) with VMS;)
I have similar feelings for HP3000 minis running MPE, as my first job involved some system programming on these beasties. Still, there really *was* something magical about DEC and VAXen in particular (I'm sure the PDPs are nostalgia-worthy too, but they're just a little before my time).
I guess that didn't end up answering your questions at all, but it any case... I heartily agree with your comments on DEC and its lasting legacy (if only the minds of the faithful).
Ok, I think I can answer this, though no idea if I've got it right. I started out as a winslave user, and taught myself a little programming, a little of everything. Enough, that soon I got a job as a pc tech, and have been moving up from there. About 3 years ago, I started having enough spending money to blow on dumb stuff, and found myself buying vintage computers, learning all the trivia and history. Everyone in the industry has something that they can claim credit for, but DEC's reads like something that would be hard to believe if I didn't know it to be true.
UNIX, and C, simultaneously invented on the PDP.
And for whatever reason that unix wasn't good enough, they went out and wrote their own oddball OS, that in many ways is every bit as powerful. Bizarro Unix, from a parallel dimension. I'm still not sure if it's folly or genius.
Intel gives us x86 cpu crud. DEC gave us a beatifully clean PDP cpu, which later inspires the MC68k cpu family. Not sure if they can claim credit for a Motorola chip, but deserves a mention.
DEC didn't invent ethernet either. But they had sense enough to recognize it for what it was, when Metcalfe told them about it. DEC was the "D" in the DIX alliance, after all.
They fielded their own risc CPU, for christ's sake. And not just any, but an alpha... I literally lusted after these, when I was still a winslave. (Wanted to run NT on them, but I've since wised up). Alpha. That alone should land them in the Computing Hall of Fame.
Their own networking protocol. Some of the big names can claim this, but can HP?
And you just don't know how big circuit boards can be, until you've held a unibus card in your hands...
Hell, they were around challenging IBM in the 1950's, half a century ago with the PDP series. The PDP-1 debuted at a price of $100,000 or so, a tenth of anything IBM offered.
And this is the stuff I can remember off the top of my head, mind you. There are all sorts of obtuse little technical things, that I'm not sure everyone could appreciate. Vax clustering, some funky per-thread security architectures, etc.
Then again, I could just be the proud owner of PDP-11/04, VaxStation 4000/90, DECstation 5000/120, and a mosix cluster of 2 Prioris 5100 XL's. Only need a Rainbow, and an Alphastation, and my collection will be reasonably complete.
And please, if anyone else knows something interesting, help out. I'd love to hear something I don't already know...
I sit in front of a Dell commodity PC, but my X sessions are open on a six-node Alpha Cluster running VMS. It is the development cluster for the largest electronic futures and options exchange in the world. The same system is used by CBOT.
I expect are some management who would love to port the application to somthing else but it would be painful to move away from the uptime that we enjoy, the clustered file system, the distributed lock manager, journalling and so on (especially that uptime).
Production downtime is bad news and it is a very sensitive subject. We paid Digital now Compaq sh*t loads of money for support and got it. I very much hope that HP can do the same.
I don't know what happened to the main Alpha architect (Dick Sites), but many of the rest of the chip designers went over to AMD and are probably one of the reasons that they have been doing relatively well of late.
Many of the software technologies have been sold off such as RdB (non portable but oh so fast) and PolyCenter, but VMS remains.
Incidently, you forgot one major technology that was backed by Digital and that was X-windows. In those days, Digital had some of the key people working with them like Jim Gettys. Digital were also responsible for the VT100, one of the first high quality VDUs produced at a reasonable price.
HP doesn't have their own protocol, that I'm aware of. Plus, DECnet is a rather full featured protocol suite, rivaling IP in it's complexity.
Wangnet... god, don't even remind me of that. There is more banyan vines info on the net, than there ever was wangnet docs printed on paper. And that's not saying much, VINES amounts to 3 or 4 unique pages on the web.
Hmm, I should be able to name all the mini vendors from DEC's heydays. Quite a few seemed to use IP, which while superior in many ways, is the wimpy way out of the problem. Apollo didn't have their own protocol, though I think they got bought by HP also. Whatever happened to the likes of CDC? Data General doesn't have their own protocol either, that I'm aware of. I've had exactly 3 hours sleep, or I'd be able to name more, but the list isn't that long, and DEC is on it. It also has the notable exception of being one of the few for which linux has a decent implementation (IP, IPX, netatalk, DECnet, and to a lesser extent, SNA). Then again, I could just be pissed that Jay Schuler is working on linux/SNA instead of fixing the damn localtalk pc driver.
But it may yet make a comeback. VMS' main disadvantange has been that it ran strictly on proprietary DEC architecture, and it was hugely popular just as long as DEC hardware was hugely popular. Now that it's being ported to Itanium, I think it has a chance to recapture a significant portion of the market share it used to 0wn.
Relative to Unix, it has no significant technical drawbacks that I know of. As far as advantages over Unix goes, it's at least much better documented, as the bookcases behind me can attest.
> As far as advantages over Unix goes, it's at least much better documented, as the bookcases behind me can attest.
Built-in features out the gazoo.
Just last week I was looking at man lpr to see if I could change the priority on my big print jobs in the queue to let other people's smaller jobs past. Nope, but su can reorder them by hand. Sigh...
How I miss thee, O VMS. And how I wish there were a free{beer,speech} version for x86.
Over here, we get have an OpenVMS machine, because we get some data in OpenVMS BACKUP format. When the number of files in a directory exceeds 4000 or so, doing anything in the directory becomes almost impossible! Deleting files takes about 1 sec/file!
VMS has some nice features, but the CLI is too clunky.
You knew this stuff was coming.. I thought they'd kill HPUX for sure, though! DEC Unix (aka compaq tru64) finally dies.. it was truly a legendary OS. That's the only thing that surprises me about this roadmap. Maybe it's just because I used DU more than HPUX.
The rest of it is pretty predictable. I mean, I never even heard of a damn HP Kayak.. wtf is that? Of course OpenView and Insight Manager both have to stay, due to their ubiquity. iPaq kills Jornada hands-down. Compaq trounces HP for business desktops.
And let's see.. printing.. there's no clear winner there. HP's got a LaserJet in every office in the universe.. But don't rule out Compaq, they are great at rebranding plastic Lexmark inkjets!
I mean, I never even heard of a damn HP Kayak.. wtf is that? Of course OpenView and Insight Manager both have to stay, due to their ubiquity. iPaq kills Jornada hands-down. Compaq trounces HP for business desktops.
HP Kayak's are Intel based workstation class machines, similar to Compaq's Professional Workstation line.
Yeah, the Kayak can RIP, but the vectra is a loss to any tech that ever worked on em. I can strip a vectra VLi8 by removing exactly one screw, the torex 15 that holds the backplane to the case, otherwise the case is completely toolless. A motherboard swap takes aproximately 15 seconds =)
And let's see.. printing.. there's no clear winner there. HP's got a LaserJet in every office in the universe.. But don't rule out Compaq, they are great at rebranding plastic Lexmark inkjets!
In redards of rebranding, did you know that for most HP laserjets (if not all) the printing mechanic is manufactured by canon? HP only provides the formater (logic, driver connected end), and the brand, the rest is done by canon.
They sure as hell won't be selling Lexmark printers after the merger. Lexmark is owned by IBM. IBM is HP-Compaq's #1 competitior now. Why on earth would they retail a compeitior's product? Or why would IBM even sell it to them in the first place?
HP-UX is profoundly weak in several areas. If Carly had come out and said "the new TruHP UNIX will unify the strengths of HP-UX and Digital OSF/1 UNIX on ia64," I would have thought her to be much more reasonable.
Really, the tru64 kernel should simply replace the HP-UX kernel, with the important addition of Veritas support.
Now would also be a good time to redesign the software packaging mechanisms and implement something like RedHat up2date.
But instead, HP throws us the same old trash. I hope their market share continues to erode.
I wonder if all those products we paid for that run on AlphaVMS will run on Itanium VMS. It would be sweet though. Didn't DEC or Compaq come out with some sort of compatibility product during the VAX to Alpha transition?
HP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to ItaniumHP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to Itanium
Imagine going back in time 15 years and telling someone that HP would be releasing OpenVMS.
Bullshit. Anyone that time travels back that far, for M$, damn well better be doing so to asassinate B Gates. What you suggest, would be like traveling back to 1935, just so you could enjoy hawaiian beaches before commercialization. Sure, it's pretty, but awfully fucking selfish.
So true. Gates, at least, is a true geek at heart. He may be the Darth Vader of computing. But he could concievably be turned from the dark side.
Bill is a man of many talents, questionable morals, and great luck. And he has actually done a great deal of good to the geek community, even though this is overshadowed by his many horrible misdeeds and underhand tactics. If he gave up his plan for world domination, I personally wouldn't hold a grudge against him. (Though I wouldn't trust him till he had proven himself to be a changed man.)
Too bad this will never happen, but one can dream, yes?
So who is going to buy these machines now, with the "In-box upgrade to IA-64" the only future for (some) current PA-RISC machines?
As it is, the uncertainty around the merger and the coming death of PA-RISC *must* have had a negative effect on sales of HP Unix machines. Anecdotally, the one customer I support who was on HP-UX and an HP 9000 has migrated over to Solaris on Sun hardware.
Any HP employees out there who can shed some light on this murky "strategy" ?
Here's a PA-RISC to Itanium roadmap [hp.com] Most big corporations prefer to wait and watch, and PA-RISC is good enough for those. And the migration path looks promising too; no code/data migration, just change the CPU board and you're done.
There's a surprisingly strong commitment to Intel's Itanium line. This despite the fact that the industry consensus seems to be that it's a loser.
Even NonStop (the old Tandem product line), is supposedly being migrated from MIPS to Itanium.
Inanium exists only to give Intel an architecture that can't be cloned for patent reasons. It's not better; it's just different. So it's best that it fail.
No mention of calculators. Will they stay in that business? HP made, and makes, great calculators. Had to put new batteries in my HP-11C today, after fifteen years.
I love my 1985 HP-11C [hpmuseum.org] as well... I wish they still made them, as I'd buy a few more for members of my extended family who are turning 12. What a great way to learn how to write simple programs; registers, stacks, etc.
No mention of calculators. Will they stay in that business? HP made, and makes, great calculators. Had to put new batteries in my HP-11C today, after fifteen years.
I hear you. I grew up around HP test equipment and such and bought a HP-48 in 1993, I had a HP-11 in highschool. I always associated the HP brand with quality.
The bad news is that HP is going down the tubes.
The good news is that HP spun off their test and meaurement division a couple of years ago as Agilent [agilent.com].
I have been pleasantly surprised in dealing with Aglent. For example, I purchased some parts for an HP stethoscope from their online store using a credit card, I got an email the next day telling me that the parts had shipped an that they were not charging my credit card because I was a student! They had my money, but they gave it back!
So, my point is, they got the names backwards when they spun off Agilent: People looking for the old "HP way" should look to Agilent, people who expect HP quality from the new "HPQ" are in for a surprise.
I guess they did not know what to do with the calculater division when they split. I am sad that it went to the HP part, because if they had given it to Agilent I might be posting this on my '69gx calculator.
Well, 20 years later and things have come full circle for Compaq. From the roadmap it looks like they'll be phasing out the Compaq name from most everything with the notable exception of business/consumer pc's. After forays into high end servers, laser printers, RISC/VMS (i.e. DEC), pda's, Compaq has come back to it's roots.
Maybe Compaq should come out with a 20th anniversary luggable just for old times sake? Hey, that's not a bad idea. They could put an lcd instead of a crt, mount the floppy/hd on one side and the dvd/cd on the other. Now that would be cool. Maybe one of those case mod'ers can get cracking on this one.
From what I can tell, the Compaq name will be kept only on a few categories of devices, especially business class ones and consumer laptops. Everywhere else, the lines will either be discontinued or they will be rebranded.
I don't want to sound like a troll, but in a couple of years (maybe a bit more) Compaq will go the way DEC went a while back.
HP will keep it alive just long enough for customers to get used to the change. Then it will dissapear from all refferences, products and documentation. HP will stop updating the Compaq product support sites, and eventually will even stop hosting them altogether.
You don't believe me? Try a google search for DEC, and you'll see how many Compaq hosted docs and web pages you will find. A couple of years ago I needed technical info on a DEC dual P classic workstation for a school project. It would have been a pretty fast machine, and I had 2 p200Mhz available to plug into it (up from the single P90Mhz that I found inside). After 4 hours of continuous searching for the jumper settings, I gave up and salvaged another slower computer.
This is the same that will happen to Compaq soon enough. Ironic, isn't it?
It looks like Hewlett Packard have been working hard on this change while the whole stockholder vote/battle was going on.
Even so, I was still taken aback when the familiar Flash-driven "Powered by Compaq" icon at the Yahoo Mail site was replaced by a "Powered by HP" icon today.
Key Decisions: The new HP will be equally strong on UNIX, Windows® and Linux-based servers, requiring middleware solutions to support all platforms...
Workstations
Decision: We will incorporate the strength of Compaq's Windows NT workstations to form the industry's broadest, most comprehensive product line....[Kinda makes you wanna barf]...HP workstations will provide great value across the industry-leading 32- and 64-bit operations system environments: Windows, Linux and HP-UX.
Is it just me, or is the lack of mention under servers significant?
O well, Linux has come this far without depending on either HP or Q, it doesn't need HPQ either.
The purpose of this document is to tell customers what is going away. Linux isn't. You would not believe how much customer action Linux has been getting of late. If I took all of the sales presentation invitations I get, I'd never see my 2-year-old again. HP has to go where the customers are, and they are asking for Linux.
"The new HP will be equally strong on UNIX, Windows® and Linux-based servers, requiring middleware solutions to support all platforms."
(emphasis mine)
How do they expect to require.NET to support UNIX & Linux? The only other middleware option of significance here is J2EE, and that already supports all the platforms anyway. Mono, IIRC isn't anywhere ready for production use.
On the other hand, I think it is good to see them affirm equal attention for the three dominant platforms.
(I can almost hear the OpenVMS folk coughing loudly now...)
How do they expect to require.NET to support UNIX & Linux?
Why not? You can already get the Common Language Runtime, IL debugger, C# compiler, etc on FreeBSD. I'm sure HP could easily work with Microsoft to bring at least the CLR to HPUX, especially since Compaq and Microsoft were good friends.
So I spent a couple of hours researching communication device driver implementations for both HPUX and Tru64. "They" want prototypes by the end of next week, however I go on vacation next Tuesday.
Guess which proto I don't have to do anymore?!?!?!
(* okay, not days. But the initial developement effort was "rounded up" to days in true software engineering style. Its still a win-win situation for me.)
I hope they bury all of the HP SAN gear in one of those vaults meant for nuclear waste.
Compaq SAN gear is really top shelf stuff, with proper standards compliance, multi platform capability (even HP-UX), the best performance characteristics and bullet proof redundancy. (I'm helping to set up a six shelf Compaq FC SAN with twin redundant HSG80s and 10 OpenVMS hosts this week, with room left for some Intel gear. Really slick stuff). The SAN gear is one of the best things they got from the Digital purchase - I've used the exact same controllers, with the exact same CLI, from DEC years before Compaq got them.
I've seen the HP gear (re-badged Hitachi, in reality) in our head office, and it vigorously sucks donkey balls. Through a garden hose. It wouldn't talk to a Compaq Intel server with a Compaq FC SAN card - and they even had problems with a QLogic card. It even costs more that a comparable Compaq unit.
Ditch the Hitachi SAN crap, please. Need I say more, Carly and Mike?
Saw this letter [redherring.com] a few months ago, but it still seems relevant today. (Quote: "The merger is like two starving men agreeing to share a crust of bread.") Short but insightful, highly recommended.
The most important question, for me: Will HP keep Compaq's service and support for business personal systems and servers?
Compaq's support is unequalled -- far better than HP's -- in my experience running the systems for many small businesses. The ability to speak to knowledgeable, motivated techs is the #1 reason I buy Compaq.
Before you jump in with your support experiences, remember: It depends on your relationship with the vendor. Buy 5,000 systems, you'll get one kind of support. But my clients buy 10-50; Compaq is the only company that offers them competent support. Don't tell me about Dell -- my support from them is only untrained bureaucrats.
Decision: HP-UX will be the long-term UNIX for the new HP. Tru64 UNIX has some very advanced features -- including clustering and file systems -- and some of those will be integrated into HP-UX over time.
Wow! Tru64 UNIX has support for file systems? What'll those Compaq engineers dream up next? Symbolic links?!
It seems that Jornada PocketPCs will be replaced by iPaqs but what about their handheld PC line? I would hate to see them phase out the 700 line... I've had a Jornada 720 for over a year and it is indispensible.
Is anyone else impressed that they even posted all this information in such a short and concise manner? How many merger/aquisitions have we seen where nobody admits to letting ANY products die for fear of losing the last two customers using it?
At least they're pretty much laying it down for us rather than letting everyone find out when it's time to upgrade. (Oh, that? Nah, we don't make that any more...)
Tru64 going is fine with me but it had some advanced features that Linux doesn't. As long as they're phasing it out they may as well GPL it and have some coders work on getting some of those features ported to Linux for inclusion into 2.5.xx, I mean HP actually looks like it wants to support Linux. Oh well, I doubt anything like that would ever happen.
I can't say that I am one of those big fighters for open source, though I must say coding your own software is easier if you have the code for certain parts of the OS (depending on what you do, different parts are relevant). In fact, I really hate it when I can't get to know what that OnPaint() really does when I want to inherit a GUI control.
But onto my read message. Where does the source go when the OS are killed? I persume it will go into hiding, never to be found again, which really is a shame. There is one thing when a company tries to sell a product, but when they stop doing so, it's only fair to their customers that they release the source. It more than likely won't have any impact on the OpenSource movement, but to some it might be very very important indeed.
The source for those OSes still contains plenty of IP that the company is going to want to keep secret. By releasing the source they could provide the information a competitor needs to undercut sales (even if that competitor is Linux.) I think they'd prefer to hold onto the IP and implement it in whatever *nix they feel it is most appropritate.
Even more reason to smack som sense into the whole software business. There need to be a "best before" date on these kinds of things. If nothing else so that it's not so dangerous to invest in software from non big companies.
I prefer Unisys, The Next Generation. Reminds me of what's in store for the future HP. Anyone work for Unisys during the merger? I had a co-worker who shared with me a song the employees wrote to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" I can't remember anything but the chorus, which went something like this:
Glory, glory, Halleluiah
Glory, glory, Halleluiah
Glory, glory, Halleluiah
And the stock keeps going down!
my corporate investment group for voting yes on this merger. The company I work for had enough votes that if they had changed from yes to no, the merger would have failed. So, our yes vote is now going to cause us to throw away over $3M in work and planning on an imminent server and workstation rollout that now has to be canceled becuase of HP's planned elimination of Vectras and Netservers. Way to go guys. lets hear it for working together to cost the company money on both the investment side, when the merger tanks, and our own side in wasted R&D.:P
Theyr's Gone. HP dropped the last remnant of their calculator organization on November 9, 2001 [hpcalc.org].
In some ways, thats a distortion. The ACO, according to those worked there, was actually not involved in calculator design when they were killed off, but was working on some kind of handheld PDA-type device which was deemed redundant when they decided to cut back. It was noted at the time that HP had frozen new calculator design for a span of several years before. There's been no indication that production of current models will cease.
"We will continue to offer both the Compaq Presario(TM) and HP Pavilion lines of consumer desktop PCs and notebooks..." So they will have two competing brands for their consumer pc offerings. HP says this is due to existing brand awareness and retailer's opinion. (The paper also says they will phase out HP's buisness PC line in favor of Compaq's.)
No, they just bought all the engineers and IP that made Alpha great. Compaq was free to continue making cpu's branded alpha, as long as they only used a 3mhz 65xx core.
The "who owns Alpha" question doesn't have a simple answer. As best as I understand it:
1. As part of settling the DEC lawsuit, Intel and DEC cross-licensed patents so that Intel didn't have to worry about Itanium infringing on Alpha patents. Also as part of this deal, Intel bought DEC's Hudson, MA fab facility and agreed to manufacture Alpha chips for DEC.
2. The actual Alpha architecture license got transferred several years ago to API (now API Networks), an independent company. Other companies (Samsung, IBM) were licensed to produce Alpha chips, though I don't think IBM ever ended up going into production.
3. The Compaq engineers who were working on new Alpha designs, as well as many of those working on Alpha-related software (compilers), were sold to Intel in 2001. Some engineers remain at Compaq, er, HP, finishing up the EV79 "mid-life kicker" revision, but they too will, I think, will be offered jobs with Intel when they are done.
So, no, Intel doesn't own Alpha, though a lot of the engineers who made Alpha (hardware and software) so good now work for Intel and are free to use their knowledge and skills to improve future Itanium generations.
Technically, HPQ doesn't "own" Alpha either. They have an architecture license but agreed to cease development of future generations of the processor and switch to using Itanium in future 64-bit servers. Theoretically, (I think), someone else could purchase an Alpha license from API and design new Alpha chips and systems, but that just ain't gonna happen.
On the general subject here - I am very impressed with what I see from the new HPQ - it's light-years better than the way Compaq fumbled the DEC acquisition. I admit to being skeptical about HP-Compaq before, but HPQ seems to be saying and doing the right things so far. I wish them all the best.
Sounds like they'll be only working with Linux from an interoperability perspective.
First of all, Linux is not Unix. Second of all, you missed at least a couple other references to their plans for Linux support within the company. They will not be doing any less Linux work than they have been, I suspect, and will likely end up working for a higher profile in the Linux community.
The new HP talks about following open standards. Where the hell is that in this roadmap?
Why the hell should it be there? This is their plan for the merging of the two companies' product lines. If either of the companies owns it, it's not an open standard, now, is it?
You are correct that there is still strategy being worked on. The integration team was sort of clean-room until the merger closed - it would have been a bad idea to contaminate all of HP management with Compaq insider information if the merger for some reason did not close, so a lot of them are being brought in now. I have some future deliverables in this regard.
Chill out Bruce, I'll get this one for ya. Errr, Dolly_Llama, do you have any idea how much evangelizing Bruce has done for Linux? He's literally up there with Alan Cox and Linus. Plus, he works at HP. Thus, I'd say that he uniquely positioned to report on how the integration team is doing it's work. On the other hand, if this is a troll or a joke, not very good either way.
I wonder what exactly it was that prevented Alpha-based machines from taking a position like Sun or IBM
It's the usual answer: DEC never knew how to market them. And Compaq? As far as I'm concerned, they never even tried.
I joined DEC right out of college. Exactly one week later, it became Compaq. None of the employees knew anything about it until it happened. But Compaq had damage control prepped and ready to go: the line they fed us was that corporate purchasers usually invite the top three companies to bid on a contract, and since DEC was fourth (after Sun, IBM, and HP, apparently), it was disproportionately locked out of the game. But whenever DEC managed to get invited, they would usually win. So the "strategy" for the new behemoth was pretty much that they expected to get invited everywhere and win lots of contracts. Almost without trying.
Well, we all know how Alphaserver sales just took off after that, don't we?
Interestingly, they had well-known DEC execs deliver these fabulously optimistic forecasts... execs that promptly departed before the integration even began. (Not that anything resembling integration actually happened anyway.)
I guess Alpha was pitched as more of a number crunching box.
Not really. Alpha did have that reputation, for obvious reasons, and it had a stable market in the technical computing field (CERN and LLNL come to mind). But that's a fairly small niche, not enough to sustain the business. The wider market penetration just never happened. When I left DEC in, I dunno, 1999 or something, I couldn't tell what marketing was doing at all. It was listless, confused, and worse than directionless.
And even that came to an end, didn't it? I didn't notice at the time, but in retrospect I don't recall seeing any kind of public support of Alpha after 2000 or so.
And so it faded away. My blood, sweat, and tears are in Digital Unix, but I began and concluded my mourning months ago, when Compaq murdered Alpha and handed its head to Intel on a platter. This merger is a postlude, nothing more...
I appeal to the geek masses - surely someone out there has already found where the reset line is.
The servers at the ISP where I work are all HP Netservers (running Linux:o) ; when I was setting them up, my boss insisted we have Watchdog cards installed (he was used to Windows, and thought Linux would have the same problems.)
I ran into the same problem you did - the reset line isn't accessible from the front panel. So I called HP, explained what I was trying to do, 10 minutes later a tech had emailed me what I needed to know. (not that it mattered - the watchdog cards have never been needed.)
So, the simplest solution is to ask them. You might be surprised.
Good news about the iPAQ line: (Score:3, Interesting)
Decision: The Compaq iPAQ(TM) Pocket PC, re-named the HP iPAQ Pocket PC, will be our smart handheld platform. The best of the current HP Jornada technology will be engineered into the platform. Jornada products will be phased out of the market in 2002."
Good to know that they were smart about their handheld lines and decided to stick with the iPAQ (not that there was really much doubt, but...). The iPAQs have been on the leading edge of things for a while now, if they would only integrate something more than SD (and *not* CF type I like the Jornadas had) into the unit...
Re:Good news about the iPAQ line: (Score:2, Interesting)
Nice to see the 700 bucks I spent on a Jornada 760 a couple months ago is going to waste. Too bad I can't return it.
Re:Good news about the iPAQ line: (Score:3, Informative)
Awesome. (Score:2, Interesting)
And, now it shall.
- A.P.
yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing (Score:4)
forced to use (SCO being the worst). I used to
go into screaming fits every time I had to log
into a HP-UX box because the damn thing didn't
even support tty modes correctly.
At least OSF/1-Tru64 (at one time) had good
release engineering. But it started going downhill fast once DEC started massive layoffs.
RIP DEC. We didn't know how good we had it...
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing (Score:2)
It's definitely gotten better in HP-UX 10 and 11; the releases before that were horrible. It still has some really annoying behaviour tho... memory allocation and reboot-on-changing-kernel-parameters, altho that's changed in 11i for some of it at least.
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing (Score:2)
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing (Score:2)
Trust me, if you have 10 or more disks on a system, you dont want to pull out the system documentation to make sure the slices you want to use are unused. And then meticulously compare it with the current system configuration in case one of your fellow admins has been slack in updating the docs. When you get many disks, you _have_ to have a logical volume manager, so you can just add a disk to a volume group and extend the logical volumes on it, without mucking around with diskslices.
Disksuite just doesnt cut it for anything but the most simple configurations.
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing (Score:2)
For example, on a small server with two disks. You get 2 36GB disks, and at least our standard configuration sucks up 5 slices as swap plus various filesystems (all mirrored). Then you have the metadatabase replicas taking up another slice, plus the backup slice. Oops, used all my slices, which means I cant extend any filesystem later on, nor can I add more mountpoints. Which means I have to make the final configuration at once and I have no flexibility to change anything afterwards.
And on a large server you get the opposite problem; either you get too many slices everywhere since you have to have a new slice for every time you extend a filesystem, or you get loads of unused space for major additions that turned out to be unnecessary. On a large server with more than a hundred mountpoints, that makes quite a lot of slices, which makes it pretty unmanageable. It's painful even with LVM.
Oh, and hot spares we dont use, since we have FC disk. It's already raid plus hotspare, and mirrored on the host on top of that.
Disksuite simply doesnt compare to a real LVM. It works for setting up mirroring, but it just doesnt cut it when you need more flexibility. You just dont want to deal with slices at all when you get complicated consolidated larger servers.
Re:The golden shine of memory (Score:2)
So long TRU/64! Thanks for the memories!
Re:The golden shine of memory (Score:2)
- Bill G, fifteen years ago
hmm...
Re:Awesome. (Score:2, Funny)
It's the Artist Formerly Known As UNIX of UNIX operating systems.
- A.P.
Re:Awesome. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Awesome. (Score:2)
Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:4, Insightful)
VMS will outlive us all, if there's any justice in the IT world.
(rest in peace, DEC.)
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:2)
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:2)
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:2)
Amongst its innumerable other virtues, VMS running on a VAX is pretty tough to beat for security...
... of course thats mainly just 'cause VMS scared the hell of the hackers.
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:2)
do you mean hackers like Mitnick [all.net]?
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:2)
Thats a really insightful question. I wouldn't even want to hazard a guess to the general answer (being a mathematician, rather than a social psychologist
The first 'real' computer I cut my teeth on was a VAX 11/780. It was such a wonderful piece of machinary. I remember a distinct excitement present in exploring the the system... marvelling at the architecture... fighting (and often winning) with VMS
I have similar feelings for HP3000 minis running MPE, as my first job involved some system programming on these beasties. Still, there really *was* something magical about DEC and VAXen in particular (I'm sure the PDPs are nostalgia-worthy too, but they're just a little before my time).
I guess that didn't end up answering your questions at all, but it any case... I heartily agree with your comments on DEC and its lasting legacy (if only the minds of the faithful).
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:5, Interesting)
UNIX, and C, simultaneously invented on the PDP.
And for whatever reason that unix wasn't good enough, they went out and wrote their own oddball OS, that in many ways is every bit as powerful. Bizarro Unix, from a parallel dimension. I'm still not sure if it's folly or genius.
Intel gives us x86 cpu crud. DEC gave us a beatifully clean PDP cpu, which later inspires the MC68k cpu family. Not sure if they can claim credit for a Motorola chip, but deserves a mention.
DEC didn't invent ethernet either. But they had sense enough to recognize it for what it was, when Metcalfe told them about it. DEC was the "D" in the DIX alliance, after all.
They fielded their own risc CPU, for christ's sake. And not just any, but an alpha... I literally lusted after these, when I was still a winslave. (Wanted to run NT on them, but I've since wised up). Alpha. That alone should land them in the Computing Hall of Fame.
Their own networking protocol. Some of the big names can claim this, but can HP?
And you just don't know how big circuit boards can be, until you've held a unibus card in your hands...
Hell, they were around challenging IBM in the 1950's, half a century ago with the PDP series. The PDP-1 debuted at a price of $100,000 or so, a tenth of anything IBM offered.
And this is the stuff I can remember off the top of my head, mind you. There are all sorts of obtuse little technical things, that I'm not sure everyone could appreciate. Vax clustering, some funky per-thread security architectures, etc.
Then again, I could just be the proud owner of PDP-11/04, VaxStation 4000/90, DECstation 5000/120, and a mosix cluster of 2 Prioris 5100 XL's. Only need a Rainbow, and an Alphastation, and my collection will be reasonably complete.
And please, if anyone else knows something interesting, help out. I'd love to hear something I don't already know...
All that, and more, is why DEC kicked(s) ass.
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:2)
DEC Rainbow.
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:2)
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:5, Interesting)
I expect are some management who would love to port the application to somthing else but it would be painful to move away from the uptime that we enjoy, the clustered file system, the distributed lock manager, journalling and so on (especially that uptime). Production downtime is bad news and it is a very sensitive subject. We paid Digital now Compaq sh*t loads of money for support and got it. I very much hope that HP can do the same.
I don't know what happened to the main Alpha architect (Dick Sites), but many of the rest of the chip designers went over to AMD and are probably one of the reasons that they have been doing relatively well of late.
Many of the software technologies have been sold off such as RdB (non portable but oh so fast) and PolyCenter, but VMS remains.
Incidently, you forgot one major technology that was backed by Digital and that was X-windows. In those days, Digital had some of the key people working with them like Jim Gettys. Digital were also responsible for the VT100, one of the first high quality VDUs produced at a reasonable price.
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:2)
Wangnet... god, don't even remind me of that. There is more banyan vines info on the net, than there ever was wangnet docs printed on paper. And that's not saying much, VINES amounts to 3 or 4 unique pages on the web.
Hmm, I should be able to name all the mini vendors from DEC's heydays. Quite a few seemed to use IP, which while superior in many ways, is the wimpy way out of the problem. Apollo didn't have their own protocol, though I think they got bought by HP also. Whatever happened to the likes of CDC? Data General doesn't have their own protocol either, that I'm aware of. I've had exactly 3 hours sleep, or I'd be able to name more, but the list isn't that long, and DEC is on it. It also has the notable exception of being one of the few for which linux has a decent implementation (IP, IPX, netatalk, DECnet, and to a lesser extent, SNA). Then again, I could just be pissed that Jay Schuler is working on linux/SNA instead of fixing the damn localtalk pc driver.
Hope for VMS yet (Score:2)
But it may yet make a comeback. VMS' main disadvantange has been that it ran strictly on proprietary DEC architecture, and it was hugely popular just as long as DEC hardware was hugely popular. Now that it's being ported to Itanium, I think it has a chance to recapture a significant portion of the market share it used to 0wn.
Relative to Unix, it has no significant technical drawbacks that I know of. As far as advantages over Unix goes, it's at least much better documented, as the bookcases behind me can attest.
Re: Hope for VMS yet (Score:2)
> As far as advantages over Unix goes, it's at least much better documented, as the bookcases behind me can attest.
Built-in features out the gazoo.
Just last week I was looking at man lpr to see if I could change the priority on my big print jobs in the queue to let other people's smaller jobs past. Nope, but su can reorder them by hand. Sigh...
How I miss thee, O VMS. And how I wish there were a free{beer,speech} version for x86.
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS... (Score:2)
Over here, we get have an OpenVMS machine, because we get some data in OpenVMS BACKUP format. When the number of files in a directory exceeds 4000 or so, doing anything in the directory becomes almost impossible! Deleting files takes about 1 sec/file!
VMS has some nice features, but the CLI is too clunky.
Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
The rest of it is pretty predictable. I mean, I never even heard of a damn HP Kayak.. wtf is that? Of course OpenView and Insight Manager both have to stay, due to their ubiquity. iPaq kills Jornada hands-down. Compaq trounces HP for business desktops.
And let's see.. printing.. there's no clear winner there. HP's got a LaserJet in every office in the universe.. But don't rule out Compaq, they are great at rebranding plastic Lexmark inkjets!
Re:Wow (Score:2)
HP Kayak's are Intel based workstation class machines, similar to Compaq's Professional Workstation line.
HP's desktop line ain't half bad either.
Calum
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
And let's see.. printing.. there's no clear winner there. HP's got a LaserJet in every office in the universe.. But don't rule out Compaq, they are great at rebranding plastic Lexmark inkjets!
In redards of rebranding, did you know that for most HP laserjets (if not all) the printing mechanic is manufactured by canon? HP only provides the formater (logic, driver connected end), and the brand, the rest is done by canon.
Re:Wow (Score:2)
HP is not really in the printer business anymore: they're in the ink and toner cartridge business, and it's _very_ profitable.
Re:Wow (Score:2)
I would have been happier with UNIX integration. (Score:2)
HP-UX is profoundly weak in several areas. If Carly had come out and said "the new TruHP UNIX will unify the strengths of HP-UX and Digital OSF/1 UNIX on ia64," I would have thought her to be much more reasonable.
Really, the tru64 kernel should simply replace the HP-UX kernel, with the important addition of Veritas support.
Now would also be a good time to redesign the software packaging mechanisms and implement something like RedHat up2date.
But instead, HP throws us the same old trash. I hope their market share continues to erode.
The iFamily lives on. (Score:2)
Aren't the iPaq and the Jornada the market leaders in WINCE devices?
I am also suprised to see the rest of Compaqs iStuff living on... since lots of it is crap.
Woo-hoo VMS!! (Score:2)
Re:Woo-hoo VMS!! (Score:2, Informative)
Time Warp (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine going back in time 15 years and telling someone that HP would be releasing OpenVMS.
"You mean that HP bought DEC?!?!"
"Ah, no, HP bought Compaq who had bought DEC."
"Compaq bought DEC!?!?!?!?!?"
Re:Time Warp (Score:2)
--Blair
Re:Time Warp (Score:2)
Even if that means buying Micro$oft shares, if you go that far back... Hell, sometimes you have to put your financial interest above your ethics...
Re:Time Warp (Score:2)
Redeeming Bill (Score:2)
Gates, at least, is a true geek at heart.
He may be the Darth Vader of computing. But he could concievably be turned from the dark side.
Bill is a man of many talents, questionable morals, and great luck.
And he has actually done a great deal of good to the geek community, even though this is overshadowed by his many horrible misdeeds and underhand tactics.
If he gave up his plan for world domination, I personally wouldn't hold a grudge against him. (Though I wouldn't trust him till he had proven himself to be a changed man.)
Too bad this will never happen, but one can dream, yes?
Kind of like office space (Score:4, Funny)
Consultant 2: And that Michael Bolton too!
Re:Kind of like office space (Score:2)
I think that has got to be one of the best Office Space references I've seen made.
I'm surprised we haven't heard more about HPQ employees threatening to set the building(s) on fire.
Sadly, not nearly as clever, but then again, I'm kind-of drunk now, so...
I'd better just step away from the keyboard now.
Re:Kind of like office space (Score:5, Funny)
DIGITAL logo (crossed out)
COMPAQ logo (crossed out)
HP logo (in crayon)
PA-RISC & HP-UX (Score:3, Insightful)
So who is going to buy these machines now, with the "In-box upgrade to IA-64" the only future for (some) current PA-RISC machines?
As it is, the uncertainty around the merger and the coming death of PA-RISC *must* have had a negative effect on sales of HP Unix machines. Anecdotally, the one customer I support who was on HP-UX and an HP 9000 has migrated over to Solaris on Sun hardware.
Any HP employees out there who can shed some light on this murky "strategy" ?
Re:PA-RISC & HP-UX (Score:2, Interesting)
IA64 was HPs next PA-RISC processor before they gave the IP to Intel.
Re:PA-RISC & HP-UX (Score:2)
Emphasis on Inanium (Score:4, Insightful)
Inanium exists only to give Intel an architecture that can't be cloned for patent reasons. It's not better; it's just different. So it's best that it fail.
No mention of calculators. Will they stay in that business? HP made, and makes, great calculators. Had to put new batteries in my HP-11C today, after fifteen years.
HP-11C (Score:2)
Re:Emphasis on Inanium (Score:2, Interesting)
No mention of calculators. Will they stay in that business? HP made, and makes, great calculators. Had to put new batteries in my HP-11C today, after fifteen years.
I hear you. I grew up around HP test equipment and such and bought a HP-48 in 1993, I had a HP-11 in highschool. I always associated the HP brand with quality.
The bad news is that HP is going down the tubes.
The good news is that HP spun off their test and meaurement division a couple of years ago as Agilent
I have been pleasantly surprised in dealing with Aglent. For example, I purchased some parts for an HP stethoscope from their online store using a credit card, I got an email the next day telling me that the parts had shipped an that they were not charging my credit card because I was a student! They had my money, but they gave it back!
So, my point is, they got the names backwards when they spun off Agilent: People looking for the old "HP way" should look to Agilent, people who expect HP quality from the new "HPQ" are in for a surprise.
I guess they did not know what to do with the calculater division when they split. I am sad that it went to the HP part, because if they had given it to Agilent I might be posting this on my '69gx calculator.
Sing with me now (Score:4, Funny)
the big Q going back home (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe Compaq should come out with a 20th anniversary luggable just for old times sake? Hey, that's not a bad idea. They could put an lcd instead of a crt, mount the floppy/hd on one side and the dvd/cd on the other. Now that would be cool. Maybe one of those case mod'ers can get cracking on this one.
The Compaq name will dissapear... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't want to sound like a troll, but in a couple of years (maybe a bit more) Compaq will go the way DEC went a while back.
HP will keep it alive just long enough for customers to get used to the change. Then it will dissapear from all refferences, products and documentation. HP will stop updating the Compaq product support sites, and eventually will even stop hosting them altogether.
You don't believe me? Try a google search for DEC, and you'll see how many Compaq hosted docs and web pages you will find. A couple of years ago I needed technical info on a DEC dual P classic workstation for a school project. It would have been a pretty fast machine, and I had 2 p200Mhz available to plug into it (up from the single P90Mhz that I found inside). After 4 hours of continuous searching for the jumper settings, I gave up and salvaged another slower computer.
This is the same that will happen to Compaq soon enough. Ironic, isn't it?
Re:The Compaq name will dissapear... (Score:3, Funny)
Who?
Re:The Compaq name will dissapear... (Score:2)
Old Out, New In (Score:2, Interesting)
It looks like Hewlett Packard have been working hard on this change while the whole stockholder vote/battle was going on.
Even so, I was still taken aback when the familiar Flash-driven "Powered by Compaq" icon at the Yahoo Mail site was replaced by a "Powered by HP" icon today.
What other changes have people seen?
Re:Old Out, New In (Score:2, Informative)
Linux mentioned twice, lightly (Score:2)
Key Decisions: The new HP will be equally strong on UNIX, Windows® and Linux-based servers, requiring middleware solutions to support all platforms...
Decision: We will incorporate the strength of Compaq's Windows NT workstations to form the industry's broadest, most comprehensive product line.
Is it just me, or is the lack of mention under servers significant?
O well, Linux has come this far without depending on either HP or Q, it doesn't need HPQ either.
Re:Linux mentioned twice, lightly (Score:2, Insightful)
Bruce
Curious choice of words there, HP (Score:4, Insightful)
"The new HP will be equally strong on UNIX, Windows® and Linux-based servers, requiring middleware solutions to support all platforms."
(emphasis mine)
How do they expect to require
On the other hand, I think it is good to see them affirm equal attention for the three dominant platforms.
(I can almost hear the OpenVMS folk coughing loudly now...)
--
<insert witty remark here>
Re:Curious choice of words there, HP (Score:4, Insightful)
Bruce
Re:Curious choice of words there, HP (Score:2)
Why not? You can already get the Common Language Runtime, IL debugger, C# compiler, etc on FreeBSD. I'm sure HP could easily work with Microsoft to bring at least the CLR to HPUX, especially since Compaq and Microsoft were good friends.
This saved me days* of development work! (Score:3, Funny)
Guess which proto I don't have to do anymore?!?!?!
(* okay, not days. But the initial developement effort was "rounded up" to days in true software engineering style. Its still a win-win situation for me.)
If nothing else... (Score:2)
Compaq SAN gear is really top shelf stuff, with proper standards compliance, multi platform capability (even HP-UX), the best performance characteristics and bullet proof redundancy. (I'm helping to set up a six shelf Compaq FC SAN with twin redundant HSG80s and 10 OpenVMS hosts this week, with room left for some Intel gear. Really slick stuff). The SAN gear is one of the best things they got from the Digital purchase - I've used the exact same controllers, with the exact same CLI, from DEC years before Compaq got them.
I've seen the HP gear (re-badged Hitachi, in reality) in our head office, and it vigorously sucks donkey balls. Through a garden hose. It wouldn't talk to a Compaq Intel server with a Compaq FC SAN card - and they even had problems with a QLogic card. It even costs more that a comparable Compaq unit.
Ditch the Hitachi SAN crap, please. Need I say more, Carly and Mike?
Soko
The unanswered question (Score:2)
RED HERRING'S open letter to HP CEO Carly Fiorina (Score:5, Interesting)
Saw this letter [redherring.com] a few months ago, but it still seems relevant today. (Quote: "The merger is like two starving men agreeing to share a crust of bread.") Short but insightful, highly recommended.
Redirection Fun! (Score:2, Funny)
It's a fun ride! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Bill
Service and support? (Score:2)
Compaq's support is unequalled -- far better than HP's -- in my experience running the systems for many small businesses. The ability to speak to knowledgeable, motivated techs is the #1 reason I buy Compaq.
Before you jump in with your support experiences, remember: It depends on your relationship with the vendor. Buy 5,000 systems, you'll get one kind of support. But my clients buy 10-50; Compaq is the only company that offers them competent support. Don't tell me about Dell -- my support from them is only untrained bureaucrats.
File systems? (Score:3, Funny)
Wow! Tru64 UNIX has support for file systems? What'll those Compaq engineers dream up next? Symbolic links?!
Jornada 720 HPC (Score:2, Interesting)
Does anyone know what the story is here?
Re:Jornada 720 HPC (Score:3, Informative)
Hacking cf-II into cf slot, I have a full gnu-gcc toolchain on udrive so can even piddle with kernel development for the jornada, on the jornada
As far as what will happen with the joranda hpc's, I'm trying to find out... but everything done so far is directed toward the $ so I'm not hopeful.
Nice and Concise (Score:5, Insightful)
At least they're pretty much laying it down for us rather than letting everyone find out when it's time to upgrade. (Oh, that? Nah, we don't make that any more...)
Re:Nice and Concise (Score:2)
Re:Nice and Concise (Score:2)
"We are committed to ensuring that HP and Compaq products are supported according to the terms and conditions under which they were purchased."
I truely believe they will follow through with that promise.
Tru64 (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do all dead OSs go? (Score:2)
But onto my read message. Where does the source go when the OS are killed? I persume it will go into hiding, never to be found again, which really is a shame. There is one thing when a company tries to sell a product, but when they stop doing so, it's only fair to their customers that they release the source. It more than likely won't have any impact on the OpenSource movement, but to some it might be very very important indeed.
Re:Where do all dead OSs go? (Score:2)
Re:Where do all dead OSs go? (Score:2)
What the !? (Score:2, Funny)
HP iPAQ? but that doesn't even rhyme!
How about HP hPAQ or
HP iHP (ok thats a stretch)
But then again this is advice going to people who came up with such clever monikers as 'deskjet' and 'Pavillion' maybe this'll grow on me...
Is it called HOMPAK now? (Score:2)
Hewlit ComParKQD?
Placard?
Re:Is it called HOMPAK now? (Score:2)
HP/UX on intel? (Score:2)
Our commitment to the Itanium Processor Family remains very strong, and we continue to see Itanium as the future 64-bit microprocessor.
Does this mean HP/UX is still going to get ported to IA-64? I thought defeat was admitted on that one when they closed the NJ-FPK facility.
I must thank.... (Score:2)
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff? (Score:2)
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff? (Score:3, Informative)
In some ways, thats a distortion. The ACO, according to those worked there, was actually not involved in calculator design when they were killed off, but was working on some kind of handheld PDA-type device which was deemed redundant when they decided to cut back. It was noted at the time that HP had frozen new calculator design for a span of several years before. There's been no indication that production of current models will cease.
Re:Risk (Score:2, Interesting)
So they will have two competing brands for their consumer pc offerings. HP says this is due to existing brand awareness and retailer's opinion. (The paper also says they will phase out HP's buisness PC line in favor of Compaq's.)
Re:Alpha (Score:2)
Slight exaggeration, or trolling? You decide.
Re:Alpha (Score:2, Informative)
1. As part of settling the DEC lawsuit, Intel and DEC cross-licensed patents so that Intel didn't have to worry about Itanium infringing on Alpha patents. Also as part of this deal, Intel bought DEC's Hudson, MA fab facility and agreed to manufacture Alpha chips for DEC.
2. The actual Alpha architecture license got transferred several years ago to API (now API Networks), an independent company. Other companies (Samsung, IBM) were licensed to produce Alpha chips, though I don't think IBM ever ended up going into production.
3. The Compaq engineers who were working on new Alpha designs, as well as many of those working on Alpha-related software (compilers), were sold to Intel in 2001. Some engineers remain at Compaq, er, HP, finishing up the EV79 "mid-life kicker" revision, but they too will, I think, will be offered jobs with Intel when they are done.
So, no, Intel doesn't own Alpha, though a lot of the engineers who made Alpha (hardware and software) so good now work for Intel and are free to use their knowledge and skills to improve future Itanium generations.
Technically, HPQ doesn't "own" Alpha either. They have an architecture license but agreed to cease development of future generations of the processor and switch to using Itanium in future 64-bit servers. Theoretically, (I think), someone else could purchase an Alpha license from API and design new Alpha chips and systems, but that just ain't gonna happen.
On the general subject here - I am very impressed with what I see from the new HPQ - it's light-years better than the way Compaq fumbled the DEC acquisition. I admit to being skeptical about HP-Compaq before, but HPQ seems to be saying and doing the right things so far. I wish them all the best.
Re:Alpha (Score:2)
There was a slashdot rumor [slashdot.org] going around 'bout a year ago.
Never did find out how it finalized.
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP (Score:2)
First of all, Linux is not Unix. Second of all, you missed at least a couple other references to their plans for Linux support within the company. They will not be doing any less Linux work than they have been, I suspect, and will likely end up working for a higher profile in the Linux community.
The new HP talks about following open standards. Where the hell is that in this roadmap?
Why the hell should it be there? This is their plan for the merging of the two companies' product lines. If either of the companies owns it, it's not an open standard, now, is it?
noah
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP (Score:4, Interesting)
Bruce
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP (Score:2)
Dude, software is not developed in a clean room on THIS plant. Do you even know ANYTHING about HP OR Linux?
Sheesh...
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP (Score:2)
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:forget the calcs, what about test/medical? (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance...
Sega of America did mechanical-based games for the Army. The name "Sega" came from it's original name "Service Games."
Nintendo of Japan started out as a playing card company.
Re:Alphas & Tru64 (Score:3, Interesting)
I joined DEC right out of college. Exactly one week later, it became Compaq. None of the employees knew anything about it until it happened. But Compaq had damage control prepped and ready to go: the line they fed us was that corporate purchasers usually invite the top three companies to bid on a contract, and since DEC was fourth (after Sun, IBM, and HP, apparently), it was disproportionately locked out of the game. But whenever DEC managed to get invited, they would usually win. So the "strategy" for the new behemoth was pretty much that they expected to get invited everywhere and win lots of contracts. Almost without trying.
Well, we all know how Alphaserver sales just took off after that, don't we?
Interestingly, they had well-known DEC execs deliver these fabulously optimistic forecasts... execs that promptly departed before the integration even began. (Not that anything resembling integration actually happened anyway.)
Not really. Alpha did have that reputation, for obvious reasons, and it had a stable market in the technical computing field (CERN and LLNL come to mind). But that's a fairly small niche, not enough to sustain the business. The wider market penetration just never happened. When I left DEC in, I dunno, 1999 or something, I couldn't tell what marketing was doing at all. It was listless, confused, and worse than directionless.
And even that came to an end, didn't it? I didn't notice at the time, but in retrospect I don't recall seeing any kind of public support of Alpha after 2000 or so.
And so it faded away. My blood, sweat, and tears are in Digital Unix, but I began and concluded my mourning months ago, when Compaq murdered Alpha and handed its head to Intel on a platter. This merger is a postlude, nothing more...
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I like canned peaches.
Have you tried asking them? (Score:2)
The servers at the ISP where I work are all HP Netservers (running Linux
I ran into the same problem you did - the reset line isn't accessible from the front panel. So I called HP, explained what I was trying to do, 10 minutes later a tech had emailed me what I needed to know. (not that it mattered - the watchdog cards have never been needed.)
So, the simplest solution is to ask them. You might be surprised.