[comp.sys.apollo] ADUS conference news & Re: DVS and Apollo's X11R4

m19451@MWUNIX.MITRE.ORG (10/12/90)

The following includes news from the 1990 ADUS conference,
and a reply to the following message.

>I received, second hand, from the ADUS meeting that the
>Desktop Visualization System (DVS) will not be supported by
>HP/Apollo's release of X11R4.  Does anyone have any more
>information on this?  If this is true it appears that DVS
>is headed for the scrap heap given HP/Apollo's migration to
>OSF and X11.  If I am missinformed (wouldn't be the first
>time) my appoligies for starting such a vicious rumor.
>
>                          Mike Putnam
>                          Naval Ocean Systems Center
>                          San Diego, CA

I attended the ADUS conference, and unfortunately it is
true that HP/Apollo will not be supporting X11-R4 on the
DVS systems.  And for those of us with DN10000s they will
not be supporting X11-R4 on the DN10000 with or without
the DVS system.  HP/Apollo will also not be supporting
Motif 1.1 on either the DVS or DN10000.  HP made it very
clear at the ADUS conference that they are moving rapidly
towards OSF.  Currently HP plans to make one more major 
release of Domain/OS (SR11) sometime in late 1991.  After
SR11 there will be no more Domain/OS releases, only OSF.
HOWEVER, HP WILL NOT BE OFFERING OSF ON ANY DN SERIES
WORKSTATIONS!!!  No, you can not run OSF on a DN3500,
DN4500, DN5500 (DN3500/DN4500 with '040 upgrade), DN10000
or any previous Apollo workstation.  You must purchase
one of the new Series 400 workstations to run OSF!

Summary of ADUS conference news:

 - OSF will not be offered or supported on any Apollo
     "DN" Series workstations.  (See above.)

 - X11-R4 will not be availabe until late spring of
     1991, it will be offered as a PSK on top of SR10.3.
     X11-R4 will be NATIVE MODE ONLY, you can not share
     the display with the DM (Apollo Display Manager).
     X11-R4 will not be availabe on either the DN10000
     or the Desktop Visualization System (DVS).
     *NOTE that you must request all PSKs (Product
     Support Kit) from HP, they are not sent out
     automatically.  Your sales rep should know about
     the PSKs available, but I wouldn't count on it.

 - Motif 1.1 and HPVUE 2.0 will not be offered until
     SR11, but not on the DN10000 or the DVS.

 - PSK-7 is required for the Series 400 workstations;
     however, you are limited to 64 processes.  PSK-8
     will allow you to run 1024 processes.  You may
     experience trouble booting a color Series 400 node
     without PSK-7 support.
    
 - SR10.3 shipments were delayed due to two major bugs
     that were discovered at the last minute, and
     because of a week long HP warehouse inventory.  
     SR10.3 should begin shipping in the middle of
     October.

 - Many new features for SR11 were advertised by HP at
     the ADUS conference; however, I am not going to
     try and list them all here, since I refuse to
     believe that there will be an SR11 until I see it.

 - For the second year in a row HP is still talking
     about a "second-generation" DN10000 (double clock
     speed).  However, it is not expected to ship until
     late Spring of 1991.  The cost for a single CPU 
     upgrade is $10,000.  A fully-merged (DN10000 & 
     HP-PA) RISC workstation is planned for 1992-1993.
     However, this merged workstation will only run
     the OSF and HP/UX operating systems, it will NOT
     run Domain/OS.

The above is my personal unbiased reporting of
information presented by HP at the ADUS conference.
Due to the protest by ADUS members over several of
theses items, HP may have come to their senses by now,
and might have changed their story on these items.
There were quite a few shocked HP managers when they
discovered how many ADUS members (close to 90%), were
still running SR9.7 on at least part of their network.
I wonder if this will have any impact on HP's decision
to obsolete SR9.7 in the Spring of 1991?

---------------------
Mark Krause
The MITRE Corporation
7525 Colshire Drive
McLean, VA  22102
(703) 883-7642

wjw@eba.eb.ele.tue.nl (Willem Jan Withagen) (10/12/90)

In article <9010111910.AA23075@mwunix.mitre.org> m19451@MWUNIX.MITRE.ORG writes:
>
>The following includes news from the 1990 ADUS conference,
>and a reply to the following message.
>
>There were quite a few shocked HP managers when they
>discovered how many ADUS members (close to 90%), were
>still running SR9.7 on at least part of their network.
>I wonder if this will have any impact on HP's decision
>to obsolete SR9.7 in the Spring of 1991?
>

What do you mean Spring 1991. I was told by some support people here in
Holland that SR9.7's death was planned for comming november/december.
Still even Spring 1991 is to early for us to get ride of SR9.7.
So I hope you've all scared the pants of them.

Willem Jan Withagen

Eindhoven University of Technology   DomainName:  wjw@eb.ele.tue.nl    
Digital Systems Group, Room EH 10.10 BITNET: ELEBWJ@HEITUE5.BITNET
P.O. 513                             Tel: +31-40-473401
5600 MB Eindhoven                    The Netherlands

krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz) (10/13/90)

According to the offical letter we received from HP, sales of
SR9.7 media and documentation will be discontinued February 1st,
1991. Software support will end May 1st, 1991. If you do not
have a full copy of the SR9.7 distribution tapes and the patch
tape, GET THEM NOW!


 -- David Krowitz

krowitz@richter.mit.edu   (18.83.0.109)
krowitz%richter.mit.edu@eddie.mit.edu
krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet
(in order of decreasing preference)

schmid@jellosub.luftfahrt.uni-stuttgart.de (Georg Schmid) (10/17/90)

In article <9010111910.AA23075@mwunix.mitre.org>,
m19451@MWUNIX.MITRE.ORG writes:
|>  - X11-R4 will not be availabe until late spring of
|>      1991, it will be offered as a PSK on top of SR10.3.
|>      X11-R4 will be NATIVE MODE ONLY, you can not share
|>      the display with the DM (Apollo Display Manager).
|>      X11-R4 will not be availabe on either the DN10000
|>      or the Desktop Visualization System (DVS).

That's ridiculous. Everybody who wants to have X11R4 on the DN10000
or DN10000VS has the possibility to get the sources of a borrow mode
server from the MIT Tape (We have it running !!). 
People at Apollo contributed to the server, so why won't HP support it
officially for the DN10000 ?
Ok, there probably has to be done lots of work (bug-fixes,
optimization)
but I think the real reason is, that HP is pushing its own
workstations.

Same for OSF: From the time when HP took over Apollo our sales-reps
kept telling us that HP was going to support the DN10000 and that 
they would port OSF to it. 

I can understand that HP isn't willing to support every DN* ever
sold, but this is TOO MUCH !!

Sorry if my words were too polite, but in school I wasn't told the
words I would have needed for this posting. I'm fed up.


-- Georg

________________________________________________________________________
_
Georg Schmid, ISD University of Stuttgart, Germany                 
email: schmid@asterix.luftfahrt.uni-stuttgart.de (129.69.110.2)       
voice: +49 711-685-2053                                        
fax:   +49 711-685-3706
________________________________________________________________________
_

burdick@hpspdra.HP.COM (Matt Burdick) (10/26/90)

> OSF will not be ported to any DN platform.

Interestingly, here is an excerpt from the latest OSF Electronic
Bulletin:

> Final OSF/1 Snapshot Released
> 
> The fifth OSF/1 snapshot was released on September 20.  The 
> snapshot contains machine independent code plus reference 
> code for the Encore Multimax(TM), the Digital Equipment 
> Corporation DECstation(R) and the Intel 302(R).  An 
> additional port contributed by Hewlett-Packard for the DN2500 
> system is included on the snapshot.