Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!midway!ncar!gatech!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!hp4nl!svin02!eba!wjw From: wjw@eba.eb.ele.tue.nl (Willem Jan Withagen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo Subject: Re: ADUS conference news Keywords: Adus, future, OSF, DNxxxx, HP9000/400xxx Message-ID: <853@eba.eb.ele.tue.nl> Date: 22 Oct 90 11:06:48 GMT References: <9010191929.AA11689@xuucp.ch.apollo.com> Sender: news@eb.ele.tue.nl (The News system) Organization: Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands Lines: 106 I've not been very nice in previous messages shouting at HP, so I'll try to be a little nicer this time; First of all, this is what I would call more then sensible use of the Internet. It is not a commercial speech, give or take a few items :-) In article <9010191929.AA11689@xuucp.ch.apollo.com> rwilkie@APOLLO.COM (Richard Wilkie) writes: ^^^^^^^ Is this an official message from HP/Apollo. Perhaps it is wise to state so, since other HP/apollo employees also use the INternet to ventilate their thoughts. ( Your title sound official enough anyways) >I also encourage people to continue to press HP on their favorite >issues - your words really are being heard and we are VERY interested in >meeting your needs. Nice to hear that not all efforts are wasted in this area. Especially since it took al lot of time from the people who started the discussion. Thanks again to Jim Richardson. >1) Domain/OS Releases: >---------------------- > SR9.7 and so we will continue to support SR9.7 until May 1991. Sounds nice and I've finally convinced my boss that he should be prepared to lose certain packages which we run for VLSI design. But how about all those who are not this fortunate, 2 months extra is not all that much. [Everybody is telling us to update, but this would cost us about 50% of our annual budget. The 50% would go to HP/apollo service contracts. (I'm not saying that HP-service is expencive, our budget are just plain low :-{ )] > We have NO PLANS TO STOP SUPPORTING DOMAIN/OS on the DN series > equipment - including the DN10000 and the upcoming DN10000 upgrade. > We will continue to have Domain/OS relesaes (11.2...) 9-12 months > apart. Now if I read this right, this would mean that HP/Apollo is going to support two main streams of OS. The OSF line which it is compelled to by takeing part in to OSF organisation?, and DOMAIN/OS for us 'poor suckers' who are still using DNxxxxx. The question is: Is this an 'everlasting' promisse? Will there be an DN/OS 12? 13? ..... > SR11 will be source code compatible with HP OSF. Our goal > is to release as much of the OSF DCE as possible with SR11.0. You caught me on this one! What is OSF DCE? I know a DCE in communications, but that does not fit here. And furhter on in the text, what's OSF UE? >2) X11 Support: > There will be a PSK available in Q2 for SR10.3 support of X11R4. > The R4 version of X11 will NOT be share mode. Well all the nice remarks we've made about wanting a shared X11R4 server has gone down the drain? So much for listening to the audience !-| There will, instead, > be a 'hot key' that will enable users to go between X11 and the > Apollo Display Manager. I'll put it mildly, is better than nothing. >3) OSF: > > We have heard the interest in support of the OSF kernel on the current > DN series nodes. There have been statements that it is already running > on the DN4500 and has been at various shows in the past and should > not require much more work to make it a product. See my previous remark about supporting DOMAIN/OS and OSF. > > DCE: > The OSF DCE will be ported and supported on ALL platforms running the > SR11 family. This is the best method of operating a heterogenius > network - and we are committed to making it available on ALL our operating > systems. Does this imply a client-server model, or will it be more a peer-peer model like it is used in the DOMAIN/OS? >4) Use of the Internet: > We are investigating what support will be given to the use of Internet > for sending/receiving information to/from HP. I expect decisions and > implementations of those decisions shortly (couple of weeks). The repsonse of the open letter promissed it by november first, so we're all waiting. >5) mkapr going away > As I said above, we are interested in providing our customers with the > hardware and software they want - so - mkapr will be supported in all > future Domain/OS releases. Oke, it's not nice but this is going to sound like a flame. The occurence made me real mad, and this was the extra drop. I'm not so shure that HP/Apollo wants to know what it's users want. I'll give an example: We're using the DPCI package for connecting PC's to Apollo's in a nice fashion and using Apollo stuff. (instead of NFS, telnet,....) When I mailed an APR with some suggestions form improvement, the general answer was: The package is functioning according spec's so there's no bug! Even a complaint about the terminal emulator (BUG) got this value. (Or the next release was the last version of the package, which means another package is going to die! ) Heck NO, don't you folks read the APR's. I even stated at the top of the APR that it was about 'enhancements'. ( APR no: 5B542505, 5B546E9B, 5B54094E ) 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