HP 3000

The HP 3000 series is a family of minicomputers released by Hewlett-Packard in 1972. It was designed to be the first minicomputer delivered with a full featured operating system with time-sharing. The first model of the 3000 were withdrawn from the market during 1973 until speed improvements and OS stability could be achieved. After its reintroduction in 1974, it ultimately became known as a reliable and powerful business system, one which regularly won HP business from companies using IBM's mainframes. Hewlett-Packard's initial naming referred to the computer as the System/3000, and then called it the HP3000. HP later renamed the computer the HP e3000 to emphasize the system's compatibility with Internet and Web uses.

Early 3000 models had large cabinets with front panels, while later models were made that fit into desks using only terminal consoles for diagnostics, with bootstrap routines in ROM. By 1984 HP introduced the HP3000 Series 37, the first model which ran in offices without special cooling or flooring requirements. Models ranged from a system sometimes used by a single user, to models that supported over 2,000 users.

The HP 3000 was one of the last proprietary minicomputer systems whose manufacture was curtailed by its vendor, outlasting the PDP-11-descended Digital Equipment Corporation VAX, which was acquired by Compaq and then ultimately by Hewlett-Packard. After almost 30 years, a five-year phase-out period for the now-named HP e3000 series servers was originally announced in November 2001. HP then extended this phase-out period twice. No more new e3000s are being sold by HP, although used systems continue to be sold for upgrades on a third-party reseller market. Support from HP to customers for the HP 3000 continued through Dec. 31, 2010. Many third party firms continue to support the system for customers throughout the world. Some customers continue to use the HP 3000 in companies worldwide, especially in manufacturing and e-commerce industries, while others have migrated to business server systems made by HP and others.

For those unable or unwilling to migrate, a homesteading strategy emerged immediately after HP's announcement of the end of system sales. In 2012, the Stromasys company released a product doing full HP3000 hardware emulation Red Hat Linux or CentOS on an x86-64 server. That product operates as a virtualized instance of the HP 3000 server hardware. Starting in 2003, HP began a plan to sell a license for the 3000's operating system which can let 3000 customers run their software on this Stromasys product, known as the HPA/3000.

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