Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!enea!kuling!irf
From: irf@kuling.UUCP (Bo Thide)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: hp9000 ser. 500 hpux
Message-ID: <672@kuling.UUCP>
Date: 8 Mar 88 12:48:06 GMT
References: <987@maccs.UUCP> <4760006@hpfcls.HP.COM>
Reply-To: irf@kuling.UUCP (Bo Thide)
Organization: Dept. of Computer Systems, Uppsala University, Sweden
Lines: 28

When we bought our 9000/540 little over 4 years ago we heard about
the new FOCUS II CPU, so we started out with a single FOCUS I.  Later
when we upgraded to include also a FOCUS II plus 2 more MB of ("commercial")
RAM we experienced a tremendous increase in throughput.  What we then hoped
for was of course a FOCUS III (with a higher clock frequency etc), but no,
instead HP discontinued the 500 series altogether....

We think that was an unwise decision, especially since the 500 is something
of an engineering masterpiece.  The finstrate cards are really something to
impress hardware people with ...  Not only do they look nice but they run 
and run.  In fact, in all these years we haven't had any hardware problems
whatsoever with our 540.  And the multi-CPU configuration turned it into a real
workhorse being able to support a large number of users (typically 10-15)
simultaneously without any noticable degradation in turn-around.

What's annoying about the 500 series is that the software is not being kept
up-to-date, no TCP/IP, no X Windows, no troff (!!), no (supported) tplot, 
plot, graph etc, and the hardware (CPU, RAM, interfaces) is VERY expensive
-- somehow we have a feeling prices have gone up rather than down...

Our new 350 is much faster but I doubt that it is a good replacement as
a central computer for our whole institute.  We don't even think an 800
series can compete with a 500 with 2 or 3 computers in terms of multi-user
capablility.  So the logical question here is:  Why doesn't HP have a
multi-CPU 800?  Was the experience with the 500 series so bad that HP has
given up that idea?
-- 
>>> Bo Thide', Swedish Institute of Space Physics, S-755 90 Uppsala, Sweden <<<  Phone (+46) 18-300020.  Telex: 76036 (IRFUPP S).  UUCP: ..enea!kuling!irfu!bt