Number 45 (Update of Volume 5, Issue 2)

Welcome to our 45th monthly edition of Online Extra — the e-mail update of our articles in recent issues of the 3000 NewsWire, plus items that have surfaced since we mailed our previous First Class issue (November). We e-mail our subscribers this file between the First Class issues they receive by mail, updating stories and adding articles that have developed between issues.

IN THIS MONTH'S EXTRA

SIG-3000 conference dates set
HP ranks high on gay-friendly corporate list
Y2K 3000 patches settle out on HP site
A friendly reminder of how to check patches
Calendars surface for post-1999 use
S-G site makes WSJ's top e-toy location
Better set better timeout values for TCP on your 3000
The HP marketing machine's graphic transgression
You will need 6.0 for SureStore
PatchWatch: Faster 3000s with HP's official patch
Reaching the HP chief by e-mail

SIG3000 conference dates set

The meeting between the top Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and HP's top 3000 development teams has been scheduled for February 15-17. It's now being called SIG3000, dropping the IPROF name of conferences past. While details on registration haven't been posted yet, program chairman Ken Sletten announced at least one day's worth of discussions: a Feb. 16 Database Day for talks about improvements to the HP 3000's database.

Sletten said in an Internet posting, "SIGIMAGE, SIGHPSQL (formerly SIGALLBASE), and SIGOMNIDEX are the only SIGs scheduled to meet on that day. We will try and reserve about two hours (total time somewhat dependent on response to this call for participants and other agenda items) for IMAGE users to lead short focus sessions on subjects of particular urgency or special interest to their sites." Sletten said the day's schedule will "allow eight or more users to present their views / problems / suggestions directly to the SIG, and especially to HP R&D Lab engineers in the audience; and perhaps to get some initial feedback if that applies to their subject."

Sletten said the intention of the day's meetings is "to offer users the opportunity to do a little more than just ask quick questions from the floor." This is the meat of SIG3000: technical discussion at some length between expert 3000 users and HP's engineers.

At a minimum, a discussion will be led by SIGIMAGE Executive Committee member Ken Paul, who will lead "one 15-minute focus session on his long-standing pet peeve: IMAGE ERROR MESSAGES. You can expect to see Ken cover fascinating old and new favorites such as these gems:

FREADDIR ERROR 0 ON ROOT FILE
CALLING INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE

.... not only that, he *may* actually be able to tell everyone what some of them really mean !"

We'll keep NewsWire subscribers posted on how to register for SIG3000, once details become available.

HP ranks high on gay-friendly corporate list

After covering outgoing general manager Harry Sterling's comments in our November issue about his efforts to help win gay and lesbian HP employee benefits at HP, we were pleased to note the company is near the top of gay rights among Fortune 500 companies. The Gay Financial Network released its list of the 50 most powerful and gay-friendly publicly traded companies. Each company on the list had to have policies in place stating it didn't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Each firm on the list also had to extend benefits to same-sex domestic partners. HP ranked fourth on the list, right after IBM, AT&T and Bank of America.

Y2K 3000 patches settle out on HP site

HP 3000 Y2K "goddess" Mariann Tymn dropped us a note to say she's updated the patch update page for the HP 3000, but the latest entries simply update patches that were put in place for Y2K compliance. Specifically, there's a VPLLX09 patch that updates the VPLKXR3 patch for VPlus. The new patch is not a fix for a critical Y2K defect. Problem: When a FORMSPEC form is compiled on January 1 or later, the formfile listing to the printer will show an erroneous date (instead of 2000, the listing will show 19:0). The problem affects the listing only. Check out the work on the patch update site.

A friendly reminder of how to check patches

It's a fundamental bit of knowledge, but we thought we'd repeat it among all the discussion of patches. You check the level of patching on your system by looking at the ASCII file HPSWINFO.PUB.SYS on your HP 3000. The first four lines indicate which PowerPatch you've got installed.

Calendars surface for post-1999 use

Certain there will be no calamity after the end of this month, two HP 3000 solution suppliers are offering Year 2000 calendars for the asking. ORBiT Software is offering one that president Paul Meszaros says is "tastefully rendered in Blues Brothers (and Sisters) blue. This fully Y2K-compliant 8.5 x 11 calendar prominently displays the year 2000 in correct YYYY format to prevent those unexpected lapses into 1900!... and it is absolutely guaranteed to correctly handle the Leap Year Concern! (It has a little box marked "29", right after February 28th!)

It also depicts the motley ORBiT USA crew (in as close to living color as we could render them), along with their names so the guilty can be readily identified. If you'd like one (or more, no fair hoarding!), please email your request to infoUS@orbitsw.com. (We will automatically mail one to all current ORBiT customers.) Preview it on our website! : http://www.orbitsw.com/USA /news.html

Wirt Atmar of AICS Research is also offering up calendars, printed as a poster-sized sheet from the very printer which created the World's Largest Poster in 1996. Atmar says, "We're getting ready to produce this year's batch of QueryCalc-inspired and -produced calendars. If you would like one, and you live in the US or Canada, please e-mail me your name and mailing address.

The calendars are wall-sized (2 feet by 3 feet), large enough to be written on, with each being personalized by having your name writ large on it. The calendars are produced wholly on an HP 3000 while running in batch, using only QueryCalc, drawing the relevant information from an IMAGE database and printed on a large-format color inkjet HP755CM DesignJet printer that's networked to the HP3000. This is the same printer that produced "The World's Largest Poster" a few years ago at Anaheim.

While "suitable-for-framing" may be a bit of an overstatement, many people do tell me that they do frame theirs (actually, I do too). If you did want to frame your copy, the calendar is of the precise size that drops into one of the inexpensive poster frames you can readily find at most any mall.

If you received a calendar last year, you don't need to ask for one again this year -- unless you've moved. Otherwise, you're assured of receiving one again this year. But if you haven't been receiving them in the past and would like one, don't hesitate to ask." You can send requests for the poster-sized calendar to wirtatmar@aol.com. Don't be shy; Atmar said more than 500 requests came in on the first day.

S-G site makes WSJ's top e-toy location

As many HP 3000 sites in the online retail business breathe a sigh of relief this week, at least one has been recognized as a leader in the toy field. The Wall Street Journal made note of kbkids.com, the joint venture between Consolidated Stores Corp. and BrainPlay.com. The Journal's story highlighted the site, which runs on the Smith-Gardner WebOrder software that's in dozens of HP 3000 MACS sites. Journal editors rated the site "Best Overall Online Toy Retailer " after testing ordering and delivery.

Better set better timeout values for TCP on your 3000

With so many HP 3000 sites relying on TCP/IP connectivity for things like e-retailing, we wanted to pass along a tip that Allegro Consulting's Steve Cooper resurrected about the 3000's default TCP timeout settings. He began by suggesting some other changes to avoid hung sessions:

"IF you have a noisy, problematic LAN, then bad packets will arrive. IF you do NOT have checksums on, these packets will not be rejected at the front end, and will be permitted to "enter" the system, causing all kinds of hard-to-find, strange errors. So, I strongly urge everyone to turn on checksums on both of the NMMGR screens on all systems. (I urge even more strongly that HP change the default!) If this turns out to help you, then you still need to determine why your LAN is noisy. But in the meantime, I prefer "slow" to "fast with corrupted data and occasional hangs".

While we are on the subject, I always suggest a few other changes from the default values as suggested by Eero Laurilla of HP CSY Networking Lab: "I think the TCP timeout default values on MPE/iX are way out of whack."

He suggests changing the default values:

[4 ] Retransmission Interval
[180] Maximum Time to Wait for Remote Response [5 ] Initial Retransmission Interval
[4 ] Maximum Retransmissions per Packet

to:

[1 ] Retransmission Interval
[300] Maximum Time to Wait for Remote Response [2 ] Initial Retransmission Interval
[6 ] Maximum Retransmissions per Packet

While you are in NMMGR, you might as well make these changes too. And, if other people see this and make these changes, there will be fewer hung sessions in this world."

The HP marketing machine's graphic transgression

In last month's Online Extra we made note of an extra-large transmission that HP's marketing machine in Europe transmitted to many of its customers, a 3.5Mb file that choked more than a few mailboxes. John Alleyn-Day dropped us a note to reveal the contents of the fat package:

"Unfortunately, Ron, you missed half the story! It wasn't even "information." It was 6 (repeat six) identical copies of a tacky advertising graphic that contained no information at all. The same image was also sent in TIF format (152Kb) and in BMP format (1.571Mb). Each file had been attached twice giving a total of almost 3.5 Mb! The person responsible (who shall be nameless!) got an irate e-mail from me — and probably from a lot of other HP 3000 people in Europe."

At left is the graphic, for those who are curious.