On Mon, July 1, 2013 14:03, John R Pierce wrote:
On 7/1/2013 10:57 AM, Nathan Duehr wrote:
DRM'ed server hardware. Pure evil.
why is that evil? why should you pay for features you're not using?
Actually, firmware control of system features has been part of HPQ's business practice for as long as I can remember. The HP3000 series of MPE/iX mini computers ran on exactly the same hardware as the HP9000 HP-UX systems, but were priced considerably higher than their HP9000 equivalents. However, one could not simply run MPE/iX on the HP9000 hardware. One had to pay HPQ to come in and run a system utility that reset a flag on the processor to enable that. On the other hand, one could run HP-UX on the HP3000 hardware without requiring any changes.
A similar thing applied to processor speeds. HPQ would typically release a family of HP3000/HP9000 processors that differed only in speed. The trick was all the processors in the family were identical other than the firmware settings. The processing speed was throttled by firmware switches that one could pay HPQ to turn off in order to increase usable processor cycles. As far as I could ever discover the clock speed was constant so one paid the same for the electricity and a/c whether one had the lowest or the highest processor speed.
Mind you, we no longer deal with HPQ or employ any of their hardware because of these and similar experiences. In fact, HPQ's business practices are what turned our firm over to FOSS and commodity hardware in the first instance (after using HPQ exclusively for 20+ years). Poisoning the well so to speak for any other name brand vendor.
Nice gear; company, not so much.
James B. Byrne wrote:
On Mon, July 1, 2013 14:03, John R Pierce wrote:
On 7/1/2013 10:57 AM, Nathan Duehr wrote:
DRM'ed server hardware. Pure evil.
why is that evil? why should you pay for features you're not using?
Actually, firmware control of system features has been part of HPQ's business practice for as long as I can remember. The HP3000 series of MPE/iX mini computers ran on exactly the same hardware as the HP9000 HP-UX systems, but were priced considerably higher than their HP9000 equivalents. However, one could not simply run MPE/iX on the HP9000 hardware. One had to pay HPQ to come in and run a system utility that reset a flag on the processor to enable that. On the other hand, one could run HP-UX on the HP3000 hardware without requiring any changes.
<snip> Just so you know, that's not only in the computer industry. Many years ago, I was looking at a repair household appliances yourself book, and saw something I considered astounding. My late wife and I had a cheap washer - it had been the best she could afford before we met - that had no load size control, only one size fits all.
After looking at what the book said, I disassembled the control panel on top, we were amazed - there *was* a water level control... but no knob for it. I drilled a hole in the panel, reassembled it, and we used a screwdriver to set the water level to the <click> size.
It was, apparently, cheaper for the manufacturer to make all of them the same, but ask about $100 in the eighties to have a panel with the hole drilled and add a knob.
mark
On 7/2/2013 6:54 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Just so you know, that's not only in the computer industry. Many years ago,
been common practice in the computer industry for a long long time.
The first computer system I learned to program on, and my first full time job, were on the krufty old IBM 1130 small computers, which date back to the mid 1960s. These came in 4 'core' sizes, 4K, 8K, 16K and 32K... except actually there were only 2 physical core sizes, 8K and 32K... if you'd bought/leased the 4K or 16K models, there was a jumper on the backplane disabling half your memory.
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James B. Byrne -
John R Pierce -
m.roth＠5-cent.us