DERSTAD@CIM-VAX.HONEYWELL.COM (04/28/91)
Just got the latest issue of "Workstation FYI." The part I found interesting was under a section titled "Computing Solutions with Investment Protection." "But regardless of which HP workstations you are using, Hewlett-Packard will bring you the benefits of open computing while protecting your investment along the way." Oh really? Dave Erstad DERSTAD@cim-vax.honeywell.com Honeywell SSEC
rtp1@quads.uchicago.edu (raymond thomas pierrehumbert) (04/28/91)
According to "FYI", "But regardless of which HP workstations you are using, Hewlett-Packard will bring you the benefits of open computing while protecting your investment along the way." According to me: Gaaaahbidge! The combination of expensive disks, expensive memory, expensive maintainence, the evident deconstruction of the compiler development group for PRism, the apparent death of PrismII and generall shoddiness have resulted in my $60000 investment in my DN10k being completely obsoleted in only 1.5 years. Happily, I have found an upgrade path for the DN10k. It is called an IBM R6000/model 520. My benchmarks show it running about twice as fast as my 10k, and I can get it similarly configured to my 10k for about the cost of buying a second processor and memory upgrade; with what I will save on maintainence over the next three years, I'll be able to upgrade the 520 to maybe even a 550, and buy lots of nice third party memory and disks. Maybe the Snakes are competitive, but after the way I've been snookered by HP following the merger, no way I'm giving them my business. .
rtp1@quads.uchicago.edu (raymond thomas pierrehumbert) (04/28/91)
Sorry, that quote from FYI applied only to HP workstations. They never said they'd protect your investment in aHPollo workstations :(
shull@desci (Christopher E. Shull) (04/28/91)
In article <1991Apr28.061037.8050@midway.uchicago.edu> rtp1@quads.uchicago.edu
(raymond thomas pierrehumbert) writes about the DN10K dead end.
At the Mid-Atlantic Chapter meeting of ADUS Thursday, we put Rich Wilkie and
Alan Holbrook from Chelmsford on the grill about where the 10K 2 upgrades
were, and received what seems to be an honest answer. Rich's perspective was
that HP/ASY was now seeking a new firm to fabricate the 10K 2 processors, as
the orignial firm cannot, although he was not confident that one could be
found. With respect to software, the 10K will continue to receive upgrades,
support and bug fixes. He also suggested that an attractive trade in program
to HP 700 Series systems was being considered.
From my perspective, getting off the 10K would be a priority, as it is clearly
not the focal point of HP resources, nor should it be. Having just finished
a technical evaluation of workstations from DEC, HP, IBM and Sun, the clear
performance leader is HP, and from what I've heard about 90MHz systems already
running in their Labs, which would yeild >100 SPECmarks, they will be able to
hold onto that lead for 12-18 months.
Right now, the only weaknesses from the perspectives of our evaluation, are
that many third party software companies don't know if their software runs on
the 700's (even though they run on the 800's), and there is no workstation
for around $5000. Hopefully time will quickly resolve the first point, and
the "Bushwacker" system due out later this {year | summer} will solve the
later point.
With respect to protecting investments in general, I would venture that HP is
doing a better job of protecting our Apollo investments than Apollo would be
able to do from the Chapter 11 state they would probably be in by now if HP
had not bought them. They are certainly doing better than Sun did for Sun 2
users when they brought out the Sun 3 line. :-)
The facts that HP has limited resources, and that ADUS' mission is to foster
the ability of its members to solve problems using HP/Apollo systems, imply
that one of the main goals of ADUS should be to help everyone switch to OSF
on HP's new, strategic platform as quickly as possible. This would lead to
better concentration of resources on everything from hardware, through
software, to support. Further, it would defragment the HP installed base and
encourage third parties to develop for that OSF platform.
Thus, ADUS has an educational mission to its members, to explain the simple
economics that mandate a rapid change to OSF (yeah, I know it isn't even
shipping yet, but "rapid" to me means 2 or 3 years instead of 4-6).
As many users will be unable to move until their third-party applications do,
ADUS has another roll, that of leaning on third-parties to port to the new
platforms in a timely manner. Given the conversion tools HP is talking about
for supporting such conversions, this shouldn't be as hard as one might think.
Anybody have any other ideas? :-)
-Chris
Christopher E. Shull Chairman, Mid-Atlantic Chapter of ADUS
Decision Sciences Department
The Wharton School shull@desci.wharton.upenn.edu
University of Pennsylvania
3620 Locust Walk (215) 898-5930 (voice)
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6366 (215) 898-3664 (fax)etb@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Bushnell) (04/29/91)
In article <910427181103.2a79@CIM-VAX.HONEYWELL.COM> DERSTAD@CIM-VAX.HONEYWELL.COM writes: > >Just got the latest issue of "Workstation FYI." ... >"But regardless of which HP workstations you are using, >Hewlett-Packard will bring you the benefits of open >computing while protecting your investment along the >way." >Oh really? >Dave Erstad >DERSTAD@cim-vax.honeywell.com >Honeywell SSEC Yeah, did you catch those return credits for DN series boxes? *Up to* $1500. Down to...? 8-) When the time comes to get new compute stations here, I think I'll propose to just keep 'em around as X terminals and extra disk storage. -- Eric Bushnell Univ of Washington Civil Engineering etb@u.washington.edu
schuh@demon.siemens.com (Christian Schuh) (05/01/91)
In article: <42148@netnews.upenn.edu> Chris Shull writes: >At the Mid-Atlantic Chapter meeting of ADUS Thursday, we put Rich Wilkie and >Alan Holbrook from Chelmsford on the grill about where the 10K 2 upgrades >were, and received what seems to be an honest answer. Rich's perspective was >that HP/ASY was now seeking a new firm to fabricate the 10K 2 processors, as >the orignial firm cannot, although he was not confident that one could be >found. With respect to software, the 10K will continue to receive upgrades, >support and bug fixes. He also suggested that an attractive trade in program >to HP 700 Series systems was being considered. Well, since I was the guy that started this DN10k stuff in the meeting, I feel I should relate to the net, what has become now the official HP answer, given to me one day after the ADUS meeting. The PRISM II upgrade is dead! No other company trying to build the chip - no nothing!! If the answer of any of the HP reps there was honest, then they were quite uninformed to say the least, since within HP this situation is known for a while. They even appointed a guy (Ken Goldner - DN10k program manager) to ex- clusively handle the task of dealing with affected customers. Now what? I have a nice DN10020 with lots of RAM and diskspace (of which I can't use any in other DN-type boxes, right?), which is basically as fast as a Sparcstation 2, or should I say as slow, given the performance figures of the Series 700 in comparison. We had ordered our PRISM II upgrades in November 1990. HP now offers, to take the amount comitted for the DN10000X cpu boards, and carry it over into a pur- chase of a 750 (or even two) at significant discounts (40% and then your end- user discount == 40% + 24% --> 54.4%). Example: We had ordered 3 10kX boards for $47k - we can now use these $ 47k to buy Series 750 stuff at the specified dis- count. That's nice, but what do I do with a 750, if it doesn't fit in my Token-Ring network running Domain/OS yet, if it will not run OSF/1 until November or December of 1991, which means if I get it I have to support yet another pro- prietary operating system in HP-UX??? It is like: Me, trying to buy two more apples to add to my fruitsalad, and HP says: sorry, we don't have them, but we can give you 5 potatoes instead! >With respect to protecting investments in general, I would venture that HP is >doing a better job of protecting our Apollo investments than Apollo would be >able to do from the Chapter 11 state they would probably be in by now if HP >had not bought them. ... Highly hypothetical. HP bought Apollo with the obvious goal to destroy it, and to force old Apollo users to buy the new HP stuff. They don't understand what they bought, and I believe they never intended to even try. This is also clearly reflected in the attitude of your average salesperson from (original) HP. Once my salesrep handed me the 'HP Test and Measurement Catalog' with water in his eyes, telling me that this was the HP bible... Did he understand my needs as a Domain/OS user, or what? [True story, btw! :-)] I'd rather have seen another company buy Apollo (actually, when the first ru- mours came up back then, I thought for sure Siemens would buy it. Too bad it didn't happen), and try to preserve and enhance what Apollo accomplished. >The facts that HP has limited resources, and that ADUS' mission is to foster >the ability of its members to solve problems using HP/Apollo systems, imply >that one of the main goals of ADUS should be to help everyone switch to OSF >on HP's new, strategic platform as quickly as possible. This would lead to >better concentration of resources on everything from hardware, through >software, to support. Further, it would defragment the HP installed base and >encourage third parties to develop for that OSF platform. Well, that's one way of trying to ease the pain of Apollo users. The other, and YES, I still haven't given up on it completely is, to try to convince HP, that the Series 700 will only be a full success, if Domain/OS will run on it! Us Apollo users deserve not to be left behind. And OSF/1 is no answer yet. OSF/1 is too far into the future - realistically most people will not jump on it before version 2.0. They claim Domain/OS is not dead yet, but they are not running it on their best available computer? So I guess it is dead, then, isn't it? >Thus, ADUS has an educational mission to its members, to explain the simple >economics that mandate a rapid change to OSF (yeah, I know it isn't even >shipping yet, but "rapid" to me means 2 or 3 years instead of 4-6). Well, my definition of "rapid" changed last Friday, when the HPollo sales guy told me, that our $100000 (just hw) investment in our DN10020 became obsolete in less than two years! That's rapid, indeed! Simple economics, eh? >Anybody have any other ideas? :-) No ideas - just shaking my head. Thanks for reviving the Midatlantic Chapter of ADUS. I think regular meetings are a good idea. Thanks for all your work. >Christopher E. Shull Chairman, Mid-Atlantic Chapter of ADUS
rtp1@quads.uchicago.edu (raymond thomas pierrehumbert) (05/01/91)
>Anybody have any other ideas? :-)
My idea is that aHPollo should immediately offer every DN10k owner
a NO COST SWAP for an equivalent power and memory 700 series machine.
I doubt this will happen, but if it doesn't, I am never, ever going
to buy anything whatever with the HP name on it, no matter how
good it might be.thompson@PAN.SSEC.HONEYWELL.COM (John Thompson) (05/01/91)
> The PRISM II upgrade is dead! No other company trying to build the chip - no > nothing!! If the answer of any of the HP reps there was honest, then they were > quite uninformed to say the least, since within HP this situation is known for a > while. They even appointed a guy (Ken Goldner - DN10k program manager) to ex- > clusively handle the task of dealing with affected customers. I doubt they were uninformed. Now that it's official bible, I can talk a little more freely. Almost two months ago, my sales rep called me to take a survey of what DN10000 equipment we had (all on maint, but let's make sure), and what we were running on there -- Apollo tools, 3rd-party tools, In-house tools. He said that the 2X upgrade was dead, since the FPU had problems, and there would be at least a 6 month delay (killing the window of opportunity). When I was about ready to mention this little tidbit, I decided to call up my rep again just to confirm it. At that point, he said that he had spoken rashly, and that "no decision has been made -- we're investigating all the options." Because of this, I'd tend to accuse HP/Apollo of deliberately giving a snow job. > Now what? I have a nice DN10020 with lots of RAM and diskspace (of which I > can't use any in other DN-type boxes, right?), The RAM is definitely custom. The disks can be put into the DN3550 and up, assuming you have the WDC-7000 controller. (ACtually, if you have the Maxtor 348MB disks (XT-4380E), you can put them into DN3000s and up, with the right controller (Omti?). Of course, those nodes are _really_ dead! > which is basically as fast > as a Sparcstation 2, or should I say as slow, given the performance figures of > the Series 700 in comparison. I wouldn't be quite so hard on it. The DN10000 is still a pretty fast box, and with the multiple processors, I feel it's still merely comatose. We are, however, looking at eventually using our nice shiny DN10000s as file-servers! > We had ordered our PRISM II upgrades in November 1990. HP now offers, to take > the amount comitted for the DN10000X cpu boards, and carry it over into a pur- > chase of a 750 (or even two) at significant discounts (40% and then your end- > user discount == 40% + 24% --> 54.4%). Example: We had ordered 3 10kX boards for > $47k - we can now use these $ 47k to buy Series 750 stuff at the specified dis- > count. Not a bad discount. > That's nice, but what do I do with a 750, if it doesn't fit in my Token-Ring > network running Domain/OS yet, if it will not run OSF/1 until November or > December of 1991, which means if I get it I have to support yet another pro- > prietary operating system in HP-UX??? BINGO!!! > It is like: Me, trying to buy two more apples to add to my fruitsalad, and HP > says: sorry, we don't have them, but we can give you 5 potatoes instead! It's worse. They said: "Sure, we have apples. Let me go to the back room and get them for you. <5 months later> Apples? Oh, no, you really want potatoes." > Well, that's one way of trying to ease the pain of Apollo users. The other, > and YES, I still haven't given up on it completely is, to try to convince HP, > that the Series 700 will only be a full success, if Domain/OS will run on it! > Us Apollo users deserve not to be left behind. And OSF/1 is no answer yet. > OSF/1 is too far into the future - realistically most people will not jump on > it before version 2.0. They claim Domain/OS is not dead yet, but they are not > running it on their best available computer? There is, unfortunately, a problem with this. Even if they put a _LOT_ of effort into it, there's no way that there'd be a stable HP-PA/DomainOS up and tested in under a year (IMHO), unless they've already started. Given that they haven't started (I tend to expect lies from them that'll hurt, not help) then it wouldn't be available until they're at a Domain/OS that'll hook into the OSF -- Q3-92. There is no reason for them to waste (yes -- waste) their time on a dead horse. The big problem is that upper HP management decided early on to screw the Apollo people, and they held to it. > So I guess it is dead, then, isn't it? Yup. Now, just learn HPs-UX (or is that HP-sUX?) > >Thus, ADUS has an educational mission to its members, to explain the simple > >economics that mandate a rapid change to OSF (yeah, I know it isn't even > >shipping yet, but "rapid" to me means 2 or 3 years instead of 4-6). Rapid has never meant 2-3 years in the workstation field. I will go to OSF as soon as it's out the door and we have 1 (any 1) product to put on it. That includes Mentor (and everyone they've bought out) Cadence (and everyone they've bought out) Synopsys (and have they bought out anyone) in-house tools (if we're not bought out :-) Unfortunately, I may even dip my hands into HP-UX. The market drives us, and the snake boxes are certainly fast. We expect to see several of our vendors with an HP-UX port this year. > Well, my definition of "rapid" changed last Friday, when the HPollo sales guy > told me, that our $100000 (just hw) investment in our DN10020 became obsolete > in less than two years! That's rapid, indeed! Simple economics, eh? A (tiny bit) harsh. The DN10000 has been available now for about 2-1/2 years; you shouldn't really count from when you bought it. (If we did that, we'd have a system that is obsolete 4 months after we bought it!) Of course, we bought it with a fair amount of knowledge about the deadness of it, but it still remains the fastest Domain/OS box around, and we need a lot of Domain features for our tools. > >Anybody have any other ideas? :-) > No ideas - just shaking my head. It's (unfortunately) not going to be possible to get Domain/OS on the snakes. Let's try for this instead. Get OSF up and __STABLE__ right away, if not sooner. This includes token-ring support. I am _not_ going to be able to get my building re-wired! Get the Domain/OS hooks for OSF in right now. If it needs to be done in stages, then so be it. We need to have shared registries. If OSF can handle NFS as well as AFS, we _could_ get by with NFS X-mounts for a while, but we'll need real file-sharing soon. The NCS hooks should come in with the registries, but if not, we'll need that next. If I can have that, I'll bitch and moan, but I'll be able to live with the box in my network. Get OSF on the snakes into the 3rd-party people NOW!!! I'm sick of hearing how easy it is to port to HP-PA and HP-UX. You can have all 2100 applications on that little box, but I won't be happy with the system until I can incorporate it into my network. An HP-UX box is as much a part of my network as our Suns and Vaxes (i.e. not at all). Do _NOT_ hold back on any of the above in order to make HP-UX a little nicer, either for us or for the HP-UX people. From a purely economic standpoint, you (HP/Apollo) have a _LOT_ to gain from getting us to move to the snakes. A lot of us won't move without a transition path. Jumping to a proprietary, obsolete, brain-dead O/S is not a transition. -- jt -- John Thompson (I'M ENGAGED!!!!) Honeywell, SSEC Plymouth, MN 55441 thompson@pan.ssec.honeywell.com A pessimist sees the tunnel. An optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel. The realist sees the tunnel, the light at the end of the tunnel, and realizes that it's an oncoming train.
crh@VGER.ENG.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Charlotte Hawley) (05/01/91)
Reply to pierrehumbert's remarks < My idea is that aHPollo should immediately offer every DN10k owner < a NO COST SWAP for an equivalent power and memory 700 series machine. I can't help but feel that many "apolloers" are disappointed and fustrated customers, but I think those of us who got stuck with the DN10000 feel the same way as you do. I would say most of the people involved with the DN10000 here are angry - it has been an unreliable machine that a lot of meager resources were expended on. As they say hindsight is better than foresight, and foresight does not look good for HP here either. If I stop a minute and think about it, I guess we may feeled "burned" but I has suffered from the DN10000 as well. It's too bad someone can't find the water to put out the fires.
thompson@PAN.SSEC.HONEYWELL.COM (John Thompson) (05/01/91)
> My idea is that aHPollo should immediately offer every DN10k owner > a NO COST SWAP for an equivalent power and memory 700 series machine. > I doubt this will happen, but if it doesn't, I am never, ever going > to buy anything whatever with the HP name on it, no matter how > good it might be. Nice idea in the knee-jerk reaction category. However, it won't help, even if HP/Apollo offered it. Does all your Domain/OS software work on the new box? Will all your 3rd-party software work? Will it work in your network? Do you want to learn to maintain a Hockey-Puck? HP: We _NEED_ to have interoperability between the snakes and Domain/OS. We _NEED_ to have OSF in a working, stable state. We _NEED_ to have our vendors porint to OSF, not HP-UX. You _NEED_ our money and support. Think what'll happen if all the Apollo people migrate to Suns, IBMs, etc. You aren't making friends. -- jt -- John Thompson (I'M ENGAGED!!!!) Honeywell, SSEC Plymouth, MN 55441 thompson@pan.ssec.honeywell.com A pessimist sees the tunnel. An optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel. The realist sees the tunnel, the light at the end of the tunnel, and realizes that it's an oncoming train.
system@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (System Admin (Mike Peterson)) (05/01/91)
In article <59723@siemens.siemens.com> schuh@demon.siemens.com (Christian Schuh) writes: >Well, my definition of "rapid" changed last Friday, when the HPollo sales guy >told me, that our $100000 (just hw) investment in our DN10020 became obsolete >in less than two years! That's rapid, indeed! Simple economics, eh? The DN10000 became obsolete the day HP took over Apollo - there is/was no way that HP was going to support 3 incompatible architectures (m68k, a88k and PA), and pure numbers of systems tells you who was going to lose (besides, HP already had m68k systems so those wouldn't go away). We too have blown over $100K on our DN10000, which still doesn't work properly after 2.5 years, but are thanking <insert favourite deity here> that we didn't get the 40/80 plane visualization system for it (which seems completely unsupported from past comments in this newsgroup), and didn't sign up for the PRISM II upgrade (I have great sympathy for those who did and are now shafted). I gather that you can get $4500 (US) for your DN10000 if you buy a 7x0; our network is Ethernet so the 7x0 would at least be able to NFS files from our other HPollos (except for 'root' of course :-( ). We may use this option, since that is the most you're going to get for a DN10000. Our DN10000 gateways our Token Ring, but the DN580s on it haven' t been useable since SR10.2 broke 'vi' in DM pads, so they're no loss. One major factor is that with the apparent low level of concern by HP for Apollo users, we might be much better off using SGI/IBM/Sun workstations. Many of our serious number-crunching users have already abandoned Apollo in general and the DN10000 in particular due to the ridiculous list of outstanding problems and the high cost of buying/upgrading/maintaining the system (it looks like upgrading isn't an option any more). Mike. -- Mike Peterson, System Administrator, U/Toronto Department of Chemistry E-mail: system@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca Tel: (416) 978-7094 Fax: (416) 978-8775
system@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (System Admin (Mike Peterson)) (05/01/91)
In article <1991Apr30.224728.2034@midway.uchicago.edu> rtp1@quads.uchicago.edu (raymond thomas pierrehumbert) writes: >My idea is that aHPollo should immediately offer every DN10k owner >a NO COST SWAP for an equivalent power and memory 700 series machine. >I doubt this will happen, but if it doesn't, I am never, ever going >to buy anything whatever with the HP name on it, no matter how >good it might be. Agree 100%, and have suggested this several times to HP, including at the recent ADUS SysAdmin SIG. Mike. -- Mike Peterson, System Administrator, U/Toronto Department of Chemistry E-mail: system@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca Tel: (416) 978-7094 Fax: (416) 978-8775
hanche@imf.unit.no (Harald Hanche-Olsen) (05/02/91)
In article <1991May1.164907.9247@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> system@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (System Admin (Mike Peterson)) writes:
I gather that you can get $4500 (US) for your DN10000 if you buy a 7x0;
[...]
We may use this option, since that is the most you're going to get for
a DN10000.
At that trade-in price, I think I would prefer to keep it around for
another year or until it suffers major breakdown, then give it away.
Or isn't a year of DN10k power worth $4500 anymore? I have never been
able to take trade-in prices for computers seriously...
- Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche@imf.unit.no>
Division of Mathematical Sciences
The Norwegian Institute of Technology
N-7034 Trondheim, NORWAYrtp1@quads.uchicago.edu (raymond thomas pierrehumbert) (05/17/91)
Chan Benson, of HP writes: >Look at the bright side, you could have purchased an IBM 6000/550 >a month ago and then yesterday seen its value drop from $130,000 >to $52,500. I wish Mr. Benson would keep his snide and irrelevant remarks to himself. I happen to own an IBM 730, and unlike the DN10k, it performs as advertised, and also unlike HP/Apollo I have been very well taken care of by IBM sales and technical support. I am delighted that IBM has dropped the price on the 550, as it now makes it possible for me to afford to buy more of them. Note also that the price of an upgrade to a 550 from lower machines has been dropped, making it even better for users. Further, owners of 550's who bought at the higher price do not have an obsolete machine on their hands. It is still eligible for future upgrades in the same backplane, you can get nice third party memory for it, and you can hook any disk in the world to the thing. Who ever complains about prices dropping? Nobody expects a computer system to be like a Rolls Royce and increase in value (though I hear that Edsel's are starting to have quite a market among collectors. I think the DN10k is a good candidate for this category). What I am complaining about is the the DN10k is a dead end, and YOUR company failed to deliver on the promises made for the machine when I bought it. So, Mr. Snide Benson, when are you going to drop the maintainence costs on my 10k by 50% ? When are you going to charge a fair price for memory and disks? What are you afraid of-- users complaining about loss of value of their equipment. Jeez, you guys really know how to keep up customer good will. As far as I can see, HP wasn't interested in either Apollo hardware or software technology when it bought Apollo. It was only interested in the Apollo customer base. You seem to expect Apollo users to junk their current equipment and buy HP stuff. In this, I think you are HALF right. I'll leave you to guess which half. .