Chris,
>It seems like HP thought there was some pent up demand to buy their
>products and escape IBM. I'm sure the original concept was just to make
>it possible to switch, but the behavior that you and I experienced seems
>as though there was some belief at HP that zillions of IBM customers
>were just begging to abandon IBM.
It was my impression that they wanted software to help sell the box - there
were plenty of s/36 packages out there, but not as many hp3k.
>The big hole in this with my customers was that they were mostly small
>shops that didn't even employ any full time MIS people. They loved the
>S/36 because they never had to know anything about it, it just ran and
ran.
I loved the 36.
I cut my teeth on that box, and by the time the 400 came out, I thought I
could make a 36 SING and DANCE!!. until about 3 months into working with
the as400 at least. I then realized that I really didn't know much about
real programming, but I wanted to learn.
until 6 years ago, I still had a couple clients on 36s. I hear that one of
them is still there (thier package is running several monolyth WSU's - what
a mess!) - They are running out of support options, but the damned thing
just keeps running. I heard they are moving soon, to an NT solution.
They don't have an IT staff - boy are they in for a suprise.
>A small telemarketing firm contracted me once for a little update and I
>remember telling the office manager (who was the person who had
>contracted me) that I needed a security officer sign on to do what I
>needed to do. "What's a security officer?" It turned out she was a SO,
>but she had no idea. I don't know how these guys would have ever
>converted to another system.>
You probably could have just signed on using the default user and password
- probably wasn't changed. (..he pauses, racking his brain for the s/36
equivelent for QSECOFR...) boy, that was a long time ago. I can't remember
what it was!
--
Chris Rehm
javadisciple@earthlink.net
