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From: carlton@apollo.UUCP (Carlton B. Hommel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.masscomp
Subject: Re: HPSM problems - The Project Leader Speaks
Message-ID: <3226@soma.bcm.tmc.edu>
Date: Sun, 27-Sep-87 06:29:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: soma.3226
Posted: Sun Sep 27 06:29:27 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Sep-87 23:20:41 EDT
Sender: masscomp@soma.bcm.tmc.edu
Reply-To: carlton@apollo.UUCP (Carlton B. Hommel)
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 38
Approved: masscomp@soma.bcm.tmc.edu
Summary: All fixed in RT-HPSM V4.0

[I received this message three times. I guess Carlton was frustrated
getting it here. There was a uucp logjam at Rice. It is fixed now. -- sob]

I believe that all of the posted problems with the High Performance
Serial Boards (HPSMs) have been fixed in the RT-HPSM V4.0 release.
I was just the project leader and release engineer, not the technical
bug-killer, so please don't send me technical questions about DTR,
DSR, RTS, or PDQ.  Lets face it, the original HPSM releases were dogs.
While the worked better than the IMUXes and JMUXes the replaced at handling
ascii terminals, they were terribly buggy when it came to all the fancy
uses that customers use to send input into the computer.  The RT-HPSM V3.0
release never was distributed, because of a clash with RTU V3.1.  (Don't
ask, you don't want to know.  Really, you don't.)

Under intense pressure from several OEMs who threatened to walk away and
buy Suns or (dare I say it?) Apollos, an emergency one-month project was
put together to make the HPSM work.  *ALL* of the outstanding SQR's were
closed.  Most were found to be due to errors in driver code, and fixed.
The others were not reproducible with the new RTU software.  (At one point,
we had a 5700 with 8 hpsm boards feeding 64 tty lines, feeding into four
5400s with 2 hpsms each, running all week.  Its amazing how much respect
your testing group gets when OEMs wave dollar signs about.)

We spent one week coding, one week testing, one week flogging the OEMS to
install the kit, and one week waiting for responses.

Everyone was happy.  

Now, if you *have* installed RT-HPSM V4.0, and have these wierd hangs,
undropped lines, etc. let MASSCOMP know.  Insist that the person you talk
to on the phone actually lets a manager in Engineering know, so they can
consider getting the fix into their next release.

If you haven't installed V4.0, get it!  Its only one floppy, and 5-15
minutes downtime.  (5300's take 15 minutes, 5700s take 5 or less.)

Carl Hommel
apollo!c!)2DaGu