21 Nov
1999
21 Nov
'99
4:24 a.m.
I have to agree, though they never could build a 'scope that would trigger
they way you'd have liked . . .
Their downfall, by the way, seems to have coincided with their move into
computers. For a time this seemed OK. Their notion of "user-friendliness"
was looking like a pretty good one in their logic analyzers too, but I don't
remember an HP computer product, particularly once they absorbed APOLLO, for
which any installation/upgrade, no matter how minor didn't involve 3 layers
of system downtime, on the order of 3 days per workstation, i.e. if you had
one server and three stations, you had 3 instances of 9 days of downtime,
say, to get the updated simulator libraries realigned, though they were
supposed to work "out of the box" but didn't. We had more servers and more
stations, so there were more instances of longer downtime.
Though I did object to the choice of HP, I was still mightily embarassed by
the fact that after having HP CAD/CAE systems for a year, they still
couldn't be relied upon to do what any PC could do.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Sunday, November 21, 1999 10:00 AM
Subject: Re: HP's not cool? (was Re: pdp-11/60 Semi-Rescue)
I think anyone who has been hooked by HP gear would say the same thing.
Even before anything with the HP logo on it could grab my undivided
attention, I was always amazed at the kind of ingenuity and engineering
brilliance that went into the physical design of the systems.
Yep... HP stuff _used_ to be very well engineered, both electronically
and mechanically. The 9100 is a total work of art, for example :-). I
love working on such machines.
Just a pity that modern HP stuff is nowhere near as good, and that their
support at the moment is a total joke.
-tony