Frank Knows his stuff was Re: What is this HP 9000/220?

From: Peter Prymmer <pvhp_at_forte.com>
Date: Fri Jan 2 23:51:17 1998

classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu, fmc_at_reanimators.org
Subj: Re: Frank Knows his stuff was Re: What is this HP 9000/220?

Frank McConnell wrote:

>I've been doing stuff with HPs for over 20 years now (mostly with
>3000s and HP PCs), and some of it stuck. But I've never worked with
>Series 200s so don't know that much about them, just what I've picked
>up here and there. And I still think I have a lot to learn.
>
>Why do I know about Series 500s? In 1989 I took a job at a little
>company called The Wollongong Group, supporting a product for the HP
>3000 called WIN/TCP for MPE/V. Little did I know, they also had a
>product for the HP 9000 Series 500s called, straightforwardly enough,
>WIN/TCP for HP 9000 Series 500. They expected me to support that too
>-- after all it's all HP stuff, it's all weird/how different can it
>be? (yep, that's how they thought) -- so I did.

<snip>

>-Frank McConnell "I want my MPE" (w/apologies to Dire Straits)
> <fmc_at_reanimators.org>

I am brimming with curiosity about the MPE OS: What is it like?

Having tried to glean some info from the HP web site I can only
surmise that the target market is mid to large businesses and
might be comparable to IBM AS/400 or Mainframe type computing
environments. Am I right? If that is the case I am curious: does
MPE run with ASCII or EBCDIC character sets? Does MPE support a
UNIX like environment - even as an option? What is the shell like?
What is the C compiler like? Editors? In short - what is MPE like?
How long has it been on the market?

Sorry, but I have never personally known anyone/anyplace that runs
MPE, until I came across a UC campus with a web site that several
MPE freeware packages available. However, from that (as well as
any possible newsgroups) it is difficult to determine what the OS
is like for the user/admin/programmer and I would appreciate some
info.

Thanks very much to anyone who can respond.

Peter Prymmer
Received on Fri Jan 02 1998 - 23:51:17 GMT