Suprtool and Qedit: still enhancing, always backwards compatible

Suprtool/Open: our latest product offering, can go wherever you want to go:
With other products, migration may involve recoding and retesting with only a subset of functionality. But our new Suprtool/Open is a complete migration of Suprtool. See the latest information at: Suprtool/Open.

News

Your HP3000, Robelle and 2027

The end of 2025 seems like a good time to discuss the elephant in the room.

If you don't act quickly, your HP3000s will stop working as expected in exactly 2 years' time as shown below:

The HP3000 operating system, and pretty much every user and third party application that runs on the platform, will stop working properly at the end of 2027.

This is because MPE/iX was never designed to run past 2027, and because most every program on the platform relies on the 16-bit CALENDAR intrinsic, which can only represent years in the range 1900..2027. If you set your system clock to Dec 31, 2027 you can see for yourself as the system clock wraps around to 1900 when it hits midnight.

Fortunately, two vendors have been working on solutions to this problem, involving applying patches to MPE/iX. Robelle has worked with both of them, and has already verified that our HP3000 products will keep running using either. We believe we're the only HP3000 vendor who can say this today.

Links to the two vendors details for their product offerings are below:

• Beechglen Development:
  Beechglen's solution will apparently only be available to companies that use Beechglen for support; it also involves migrating to run on Beechglen's hosted HP3000 hardware.
• Paul Taffel Consulting (PTC)'s JUMP/3000 product:
  JUMP/3000 is available for testing today, and can be installed on your own systems, whether they use HP hardware or Stromasys Charon emulators.

We use JUMP/3000 in-house at Robelle, and have tested it very extensively.

Whichever solution you choose, you must be prepared to thoroughly test your applications and the third-party products that you rely on. It is almost certain that, even using these post-2027 solutions, you will have to make changes to your own software to keep running.

This is because every single piece of HP3000 software was written in the knowledge that it would never be used after 2027. The patches are designed to allow MPE/iX to keep running, but they can't guarantee that every single user program will also work after 2027, unmodified.

We anticipate that there will be a last-minute frenzy, as the remaining HP3000 users begin to realize that there's a hard deadline looming. Needless to say, there is a very limited supply of HP3000 expertise still available, and you would be well advised to start the process of preparing for January 1, 2028, if you'd like for your HP3000s to keep running afterwards.

Files in FTP area

We have been inundated with crawlers, (mainly sites crawling for AI content) and it has contributed to exceeding our bandwidth. Open.ai/chatgpt being the main protagonist and some others.

I have temporarily, turned off access to some of the assets in our ftp area, mainly the manuals. This was the primary area where we were mined and we do have a lot of data there. If you require any manual I can happily send it to you. Send a note to support "at" robelle.com and I will send whatever you need.

One Number for All

We have cancelled our phone number 604.501.2001. We can be reached for all things at 289.480.1060. As a reminder our address has changed as well.

New Mailing Address.

Robelle has a new mailing address:

Robelle Solutions Technology Inc.
Suite 325, 4025 Dorchester Road
Niagara Falls, ON Canada L2E 7K8

Please update your records accordingly.

There are numerous places where our address is listed, such as technical papers, What's Up Doc Newsletters. We will update what we can, but the primary contact places, such as Invoices and the main Contact Us areas are updated.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

October 2024 Newsletter.

The latest Newsletter has been distributed and is available here.

June Newsletter.

The latest Newsletter has been distributed and is available here.

October Newsletter.

The latest Newsletter has been distributed and is available in the newsletter section.

Our Fax Number is no More.

Much like the Parrot in the infamous Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch, our Fax machine will soon be no more. In all seriousness, though we will be getting rid of the separate fax number, you may still be able to send a fax, however, you would need to call in to the office beforehand.