Welcome to our 17th edition of Online Extra, the e-mail update of articles in the May 1997 3000 NewsWire and items of interest since we last mailed our First Class issue. This service is an exclusive to our paid subscribers. We'll e-mail you this file between the First Class issues you receive by mail, updating stories you've read and adding items that have developed between issues.
HP 3000 division sets up Year 2000 help at Web site
HP's making good on its promise to keep the Year 2000 information
flowing for HP
3000s. After it released the first cut of its Year 2000 White Paper as we
reported in our
May issue, HP has begun to freshen the information. HP calls its program of
Year 2000
advice Cure 2000, and it has updated its Web site with new information
specific to the
HP 3000. By browsing to the HP 3000 portion of the
Cure 2000 site you can review
HP's advice about resetting your system clock to test your Year 2000
capability. HP says
that "setting an MPE/iX system via the DATE command to the year 1999 and
running it
through the year 2000 will not test the hardware functionality of the 2000
rollover." HP
advises you use the CLKUTIL utility in MPE/iX to reset your system's RTC.
CSY is also offering its own set of Year 2000 programs and tips on its Jazz Web server at a CSY Year 2000 Freeware page. For the moment it contains the source code for SETDATE, a utility that alters the date in the current session. Some CI commands such as SHOWTIME and SHOWME are not affected by the utility, written by HP's Wolfgang Kinscher, so those CI commands will still show the system date. The utility is useful for sites that have batch programs which use CURRENT DATE from the 3000. SETDATE lets you manipulate the machine date without affecting everyone on the system.
NewsWire subscriber Stan Sieler took a look at SETDATE, and posted this commentary on the freeware:
"Cursory inspection of SETDATE implies to me that it primarily depends upon setting up a job/session variable, HPCURDAT, with the desired "fake" date. It then arms an AIF:PE intercept of CALENDAR (probably for the session and any descendant processes). Whenever CALENDAR is called, the intercept is invoked, and the session variable's value is returned."
"Assuming that's the correct analysis, there are some problems/limitations with that approach:
1) If your batch job starts at 11:30 PM, and you've used SETDATE (at
startup)
to set the date to 2000-01-01. Unfortunately, after 31 minutes of running,
subsequent
calls to CALENDAR will get a value that hasn't been incremented.
This could be fixed by having SETDATE record a DELTA between the "real" time and the "fake" time. Then, the CALENDAR intercept would fetch the delta from the variable, fetch the real time, add them together, and return the result.
2) If your software is computing a future date (e.g., 1 day from now,
or 2 days from now), and STREAMing with that date, things probably won't
work right.
3) There are a lot of other sources for the date/time. Including,
HPCIGETVAR (" HPDATEF" / "HPINTRODATEF"), FFILEINFO, FGETINFO, and others.
Still, for simple testing, it's straight-forward, easy to use."
How to get Java from the FREEWARE tape working
HP has posted its latest update to the Java Development Kit for
the HP 3000 at the Jazz
Web site, making version 1.1.2 available. But if you've been working with
the Java 1.0.1
release from the FREEWARE contributed tape available from Interex and the IPROF
conference, you've probably been struggling with getting the software to
work. Mike
Yawn, the CSY engineer who's leading the effort to make Java available on
the HP 3000,
posted some patches to the Java programs that were on the tape. He notes:
"When the FREEWARE tape was built, I left off several library files needed to make the whole thing work. Anyone trying to use the version of Java on the FREEWARE tape has no doubt encountered the unresolved externals that result.
I have created a patch containing the three missing libraries, and placed it on Jazz in both MOVER and 5.5 TAR format. If you're trying to use the freeware Java distribution, please download and unpack this set of files (~150K)."
Yawn has also made the latest version of the Java software, 1.1.2, available at the 3k Associates FTP site, ftp.3kassociates.com/POSIX/java112.M.z. Yawn said he's posted the latest version of Java at an FTP site because some people are having trouble downloading the 16Mb of files using Web browsers. The file above is in MOVER format, while a file named java112.tar.gz is in tar format.
Yawn's patch to fix the FREEWARE tape version of Java, as well as the full 1.1.2 version of the software, is at CSY's HP 3000 Java page,
What those VPLUS enhancements for Year 2000 can do
In our May issue we noted that the Express 2 Release of MPE/iX 5.5
contains VPLUS
enhancements, improvements that can make a Year 2000 project go smoother.
One of
our astute subscribers, Jim Phillips of Therm-o-Link, knew the new VGETYYYYMMDD
and VPUTYYYYMMDD intrinsics convert dates to and from YYYYMMDD format, and
found out that the field formats supported are MDY, DMY and YMD.
The conversion takes place this way:
If VSETNEXTCENTURY variable is not set,A CHAR or NUM or DIG field with valid data in it, and validation (month in range 01 12, day in valid range for month) is handled in the same way it is handled in VPUTYYMMDD and VGETYYMMDD.MDY field with field length 6 would produce MMDDYY
DMY DDMMYY
YMDYYMMDD MDY field with field length 8 (4-digit years) MMDDYYYY
DMY DDMMYYYY
YMD YYYYMMDDIf VSETNEXTCENTURY variable is set,
MDY field with field length 6 would produce MMDDYYYY
DMY DDMMYYYY
YMD YYYYMMDD
Phillips also wanted to know what use anybody could make of the new VPUTSAVEFIELD intrinsic if it does not modify the value of the save field. CSY Bangalore engineer M. Gopalakrishnan reported:
"Two new intrinsics have been added to VPLUS to enable applications to access Save Fields. The values of Save Fields can be accessed/changed using the new intrinsics. VGETSAVEFIELD copies contents of the specified save field from save field buffer *in memory to an application*. VPUTSAVEFIELD copies data from an application to the specified save field *in memory*. However, these intrinsics cannot/do not modify the values of save fields *in forms file.*"
One use you WON'T find for those new 9Gb drives
It wasn't immediately clear at their introduction, but the new 9Gb
disk drives for HP
3000s we introduced in our May issue cannot serve as LDEV1 devices. That's
to say that
HP won't support the devices if you choose to use them as LDEV1 on your HP
3000. HP
has been investigating a set of changes to MPE/iX that would extend the
system's limits to
support the larger disks. HP reported to its channel partners that the
changes are related
to supporting 64-bits, and CSY hasn't committed to making the changes yet.
Getting the new drives working on HP 3000s requires a patch, MPEJX95,
that you
apply to MPE/iX 5.5. They're supported as embedded devices on Series 9x9
and 9x8 HP
3000s, and rack mounted drives for the Series 99x systems. You can also use
the drives
in external peripheral cabinets or Jamaica high availability enclosures.
Upgrade values posted for Series 997 systems
HP is only offering the new Series 997 systems in one- through
five-processor
configurations this fall, but it has posted information on performance
upgrades versus
costs to move from the Series 996 systems to the newer computers. The most
interesting
part of the HP chart on the upgrades covers your costs and benefits to move
from Series
996/500 through Series 996/800 systems. These four HP 3000s are all
targeted for an
upgrade to the Series 997/500, with the following costs and performance
boosts:
Current system Performance boost to 997 Cost
996/500 72 percent $160,000
996/600 51 percent $145,000
996/700 37 percent $130,000
996/800 25 percent $115,000
Current system Performance boost to 997 CostNewsWire subscriber and independent HP 3000 consultant Bill Lancaster posted the relative performance ratings of the current 99x systems (that is, those currently being sold or supported by HP). This is as close as you'll get to measuring the relative performance of the most powerful HP 3000s, since CSY doesn't benchmark 3000s with industry standard marks anymore. All systems are rated with a Series 918 as 1.0:
996/400 71 percent $130,000
996/300 68 percent $100,000
996/200 65 percent $70,000
996/100 58 percent $40,000
997/100 -- 7.6
997/200 -- 13.2
997/300 -- 18.0
997/400 -- 22.2
997/500 -- 26.2
996/100 -- 4.8
996/200 -- 8.0
996/300 -- 10.7
996/400 -- 13.0
996/500 -- 15.2
996/600 -- 17.3
996/700 -- 19.2
996/800 -- 21.0
995/100 -- 4.2
995/200 -- 7.1
995/300 -- 9.8
995/400 -- 11.8
995/500 -- 13.9
995/600 -- 16.0
995/700 -- 18.0
995/800 -- 20.0
Finally, HP 3000 VAR Computer Solutions, Inc. has updated a performance chart that lists all 900 Series HP 3000s to include the new 997 systems. You can download a copy at their Web site. CSI marketing manager John Painter says you can steer to the "stuff to download" page and look for the link to the chart there. It's an Adobe Acrobat PDF file that when downloaded will print nicely.
3000 Buyer's guides online
HP has put the first details on its HP 3000 systems into its
Online Buyer's Guide on
the World Wide Web. Steer to
http://hpcc92
0.external.hp.com/hpwebcat/hp3ks/qsummary.html to look up information
about HP 3000s, including tips on how to choose a 9x9 system (no mean feat,
considering that HP is selling 12 different models now. There's no help on
how to
handicap the other five 9x9 systems (no longer sold, but the 959s are
available as an
upgrade option through this year.) But the neatest part of the site so far
is the capability
to compare all the specifications for any four HP 3000 systems still being
sold in a table
that displays in your Web browser.
Prices for the systems -- kind of the point, really -- still aren't online, but HP expects to post them this summer. The posting of the HP 3000 information is the start of making good on CSY marketing manager Cathy Fitzgerald's promise to get a configuration guide online for HP 3000s. All that's needed now is the configuration capability and pricing.
HP lowers costs on "free" network printing for HP 3000s
In our May issue we gave a low-cost network printing solution,
PRINTPATH/SE from
RAC Consulting, a
healthy review. The $1,200 product lets you get any of your printers
online with the HP 3000 network and gives lots of control over print
capabilities. But if
you're stubborn enough to want network printing for "free," then you're
committed to
using the new network printing capabilities included in the 5.5 release of
MPE/iX. HP
just lowered the price point on this feature.
It's not really free. That's because network printing on 5.5, even with its limited feature set, still requires that you use JetDirect print servers that talk to the HP 3000. Now the price has come down on the mandatory hardware to go with "free" network printing for the HP 3000. A new model of JetDirect, the HP JetDirect 150X, is expected to sell for as little as $150US. HP's list is $199, but resellers and PC integrators will be cutting that price.
Of course, introducing more hardware into your network, even if it's purported to be "fast" like the JetDirect, doesn't make your HP 3000 printing as reliable or speedy as sticking to the basics with HP 3000-native solutions. But if you can't get that $1,200 broken loose, at least now the JetDirect units will set you back a little less. In network printing, there is no free lunch -- and you get what you pay for.
Ping of Death patch works, if you get the right one
You can protect your HP 3000s that are on networks with Windows NT
and Windows
95 systems from the Ping of Death -- a program that lets users crash your
3000s with the
PING.EXE program -- but only if you get the right patch from HP. Customers
report that
the first patch, NSTEDJ9A, didn't work and repeatedly fails to install. Be
sure to ask for
the new patch, NSTEDJ2A. The documentation included with the packed file is
important, as the new patch is dependent on a NMSED98A patch being
installed before
the NSTEDJ2A patch is installed. HP ships both of the patches together.
If you're wondering about MPE/iX 5.5 protection from the Ping of Death, so are we. There's been no word yet from CSY about a patch for the latest version of MPE. The only solution for the moment appears to be removing PING.EXE from all the PCs on the 3000's network.