Conference 7.286::digital

    No I don't and I'm interested in hearing about what this tool can
    indeed do, please elaborate.....
    
    Mav

    I would think that now with the imminent retirement/EOL of
    XCS/XSEL/XCON an alternative way to get help and support
    for configurations could be/is (?) the Golden Eggs manual.
    

    Matti,
    
    the Golden Eggs are a great visual tool and you should be congratulated
    for them. I believe that all people who configure Digital hardware
    products, whether for sale or otherwise should investigate whether this
    tool can help them. 
    
    We have a superb competitive tool here,
    
    Now if the same could be done for our software....
    
    
    Regards,
    John
    
    

    Has anybody thought about describing the name, "golden eggs"?

    It's hard to get enthusiastic when you can't even figure out what
    the subject matter is.

    \john    

    Golden Eggs is a hardware configuration tool -- in the past few years,
    Digital has talked about creating a number of hardware configuration
    tools to help Sales, Sales Support, etc.
    
    While Golden Eggs is rather simple, and is only text based, it has
    one decided advantage over every other hardware configuration tool
    that has been looked at: it's real, it's functional, and it helps.
    
    All the others were either vaporware, or lost their funding.
    
    					andrew

    Thanks for descrambling the name.

re: .6

>    Thanks for descrambling the name.

I suppose I could be wrong, but you've never heard the story about killing
the goose that lays the golden eggs?

Ray

    I've seen it, and I admire it (and the perseverance of the "team" that
    produce it) too.
    
    It isn't text-based (e.g. the SOC is text-based), it is PICTORIAL. A
    picture is worth two thousand bytes (or more) of text.
    
    Take alook, and ask yourself why we have to rely on the goodwill of a
    small number of individuals to produce stuff like this.
    
    regards
    john

    Sounds interesting. What level of effort will be required to maintian
    this, and is there a commitment to do so?? Having been involved in 
    early XSEL/XCON days, I know the problems to be formidable--though they
    have changed considerably over time. There's still a high level of base
    complexity, and a high degree of volatility in the data.
    
    Bruce

    >It isn't text-based (e.g. the SOC is text-based), it is PICTORIAL. A
    >picture is worth two thousand bytes (or more) of text.

    Agreed -- I meant to say paper-based. I mention this to contrast it to
    many of the other contenders, which were online (mostly PC-based)
    tools.  Of course, paper-based pictures are much more valuable to
    online vaporware.  It's a good tool.  Kudos to the maintainers for
    their dedication, and perseverance.

Hi!

GOLDEN EGGS Visual Configurations are back again.
After several delays I finally managed to put together a fresh
configuration album for our SELLING forces.

PLEASE NOTE::::
At this moment GOLDEN EGGS is available in Hard Copy only.
This is the only way to get FUNDING for this important project.
The project team for GOLDEN EGGS is total 0.2 (zero point 2) Man!!!!

Please Order now Hard Copies for your Selling forces: 
Digital Sales, MCS and PARTNERS

        
GOLDEN EGGS Visual Configuration guide Rev 20 Ordering gate is open!
Send your kind volume order to:

MATTI PATARI at FNO 
Booklet order number: EC-R020B-36

Price   $10/Copy 
Minimum order  50 copies , One Box.
Please place your order with shipping details:

- Your CC
- Your CC managers name
- Number of copies ordered ( 50 is minimum) 
- Accurate Digital shipping STREET address.
  ( No Box, include your Country name too)

Thank You for your kind order!

Matti Patari
Sales Support in Helsinki,Finland
Spirit of GOLDEN EGGS

    Re: .11
    
    Matti, even if you're not willing to put up all of Golden Eggs on
    the net at the moment, put up at least a couple of "teaser" pages 
    of popular systems so that seeing them wants one to get the rest 
    too. :-)
    
    ...petri

    I found the announcement on VTX IR, which stated that each page of
    Golden Eggs was available from IR via Postscript -- however there
    were no pointers to these pages.
    
    Given the state of change in our offerings, the hardcopy nature of the
    guide, the lack of ability to select just the system(s) in which one
    is interested, and the $500 minimum order for hardcopy guides (50x$10)
    it would be difficult to justify to my manager right now.
    
    While I can appreciate the effort in producing Golden Eggs and would
    certainly like to fund the value added effort by participating, this
    method of distribution needs some work, IMHO.
    
    The same reason the SOC is now on-line for each system -- it is fresh,
    up-to-date, and atomic.  Perhaps the Golden Eggs can be made available
    in the same fashion.
    
    /Kent
    Sales Support - Phoenix

Matti,

Golden Eggs are great and it is a pitty that is does not have corporate 
attention for more funding.
I would like to ask if there are any plans of bringing  Golden Eggs under WWW.
It would mean that all info is kept up to date at a central place and giving
it access to all who need it in the company.
By making 'clickable maps' one could make technical info, order info
available by clicking on the item.
I just read the amount of time/manpower available, which gives me little
hope. It would really make life a lot easier.

Regards, Peter Brouwer                 \\\//
pb@bilbo.jgo.dec.com                   (0 0)
-----------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo----------------------------
# Digital Equipment B.V.               /    European Storage Engineering,
# DIGITAL : JGO::PBROUWER,889-9174     \    BLD B2/21A P.O.Box 6774,
# PHONE:[+31][0]80 52 ext 9174,fax 9696     6503GG Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Hi,

I'm a contract employee, not permanent;  I've only been working within DEC for
1 month or so, but I've just seen your "Golden Eggs" document and I think it's 
excellent.

One point I would like to make which maybe you need to correct though :

In our group we have an Alpha AXP 2300, with an external BA350 StorageWorks
expansion tower.  This contains 2 RZ28 disks;  Inside the 2300 main box are 2
other disks, a DAT tape drive, and a CDROM.  Altogether 6 SCSI devices, plus
the controller card = 7, the maximum allowed on SCSI.

Now the Adaptec 1742 SCSI controller on this machine is a FAST SCSI controller,
this means that the SCSI spec must be adhered to very carefully.

In the BA350 manual it states that the MAXIMUM length of the SCSI bus is 3.0
metres, from the terminator inside the 2300, to the terminator inside the
BA350.  We set the system up, using a BN21H-02 cable (a 2 metre cable). The
length of the SCSI bus inside the BA350 is 0.9 metres.  That makes 2.9 metres
of EXTERNAL cabling ... plus whatever is inside the 2300 - maybe 60 cm.  A
total of 3.5 metres, over the spec. length, although not by much.

We had big problems when we started using the external disks on the BA350.  The
O/S would grind to a halt, and lots of SCSI CAM errors were logged.  We thought
that perhaps one of the (new) RZ28 disks was faulty.  Tech. support gave us
excellent help, and suggested that the overall length of our SCSI bus was the
cause of all the problems - Adaptec 1742 controllers are notoriously fussy on
this.  We connected a BN21H-01 (1 metre) cable between the 2300 and the BA350,
and the system has been faultless since.

So please ... do not specify the BN21H-02 between the 2300 and the BA350,
specify a BN21H-01 !  It will prevent lots of customer problems !  The end result 
is not all that pretty - it is necessary to stand the BA350 back-to-front alongside
the 2300 box, so that the cable will reach.  But at least it works that way !
It may be possible to use a BN21H-1E ... but we havn't tried that, and the overall
length may once again be marginal.

Alternatively, it IS possible to use the BN21H-02 cable ... IF you install a
SECOND Adaptec 1742 SCSI controller card in the 2300.  There are then 2
separate SCSI busses, and each can be up to 3 metres long.

I hope this infomation is useful to you, I'd not like other people to have the
problems that we did, they cost us a fair bit of time, and are easy to avoid
when you know about the importance of staying within the SCSI spec !

We had a lot of difficulty finding out exactly WHAT cables are available when
trying to solve this problem - and what their part numbers are.  Now I've seen
"Golden Eggs" I think it could have saved us quite a bit of trouble, as they are
all there, neatly displayed on the back page.

I think the idea of a WWW version of this document is fantastically powerful, it
could be kept perfectly up to date, and everyone would have access to it.
Plus it might save a few trees.
 

regards,

Ed Randall

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ed Randall           Digital Equipment Co.Ltd., Worton Grange, Reading
DECnet : RDGENG::RANDALL                   Internal phone : 7-830-4712
Internet : erandall@muffit.reo.dec.com       Telephone: (01734) 204712
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello
This is a Fresh GOLDEN EGGS User Bulletin from today.
It is about one new page, AlphaStation 250 4/266 that is available On-line.
...........................................................................
Aihe: I: GOLDEN AlphaStation 250 4/266 On-line

Hi!
	 	  
One new page for GOLDEN EGGS Rev20 is On-line at our Helsinki host:

HSKAPL::SYS$PUBLIC:[ANU]GOLDaw2504266a.ps

This is AlphaStation 250 4/266.
Please Spool copy this PostScript Page to update your Rev20 Hard Copy.

Have a good start for your Alpha business of Q4!!

Matti 


Jakelu:(distribution deleted)

                                                                           

Hello 
Please find attached Jari's mail showing WWW pointer for 
GOLDEN EGGS AlphaServer 250 4/266 page.
 
Matti

______________________________
From:	NAMIX::jpt "Jari Tavi  11-Apr-1995 0910" 11-APR-1995 09:10:54.94
To:	patari@dec:.fno.eemeli
CC:	
Subj:	Re: I: GOLDEN AlphaStation 250 4/266 On-line 


Matti,


GOLDEN EGGS page for AlphaStation 250 4/266 can be also reached through
world famous WWW using any WWW client (Mosaic, Netscape or Lynx for example).

Accesspoint for this information is:

	http://viima.fno.dec.com/

		New AlphaStation systems
			-> AlphaStation 250 4/266

or more directly:

	http://viima.fno.dec.com/Digital/AlphaStations.html

If your client doesn't have PostScript viewer, you must load the file to
local disk and print it to view its contents.

Best regards,

		-jari

    This is interesting,
    I just received a phone call from one of our major resellers in UK.
    We had a nice talk about GOLDEN EGGS booklet. How it supports 
    reseller's daily work etc..
    Then I made a proporsal him to get more booklets for his own Customers.
    No way, he wants to keep that single copy for his own use?
    How come? 
    Why not give this good ORDERING tool to customers, NO!
    ??
    
    Why to hide our good products from money?
    
    Matti 

    We ordered 2000 copies for the next quarterly Business Partner
    Training, starting 17 April 1995.  The Business Partners got wind of it
    and I had to order 100 for immediate distribution to the support
    centers.  I'm going to have to order an additional 50.
    
    Business Partners are reluctant to give this to customers because then
    they wouldn't have a copy for themselves.  Hopefully this distribution
    will make more available to Business Partners and Customers.
    
    Definitely a value-added tool that the Business Partners look forward
    to using.                              
    
    	Regards,
    
    	 kam 

    Hei Kam,
    Thanks for your kind order for 50 more copies of GOLDEN EGGS.
    Early to morrow morning we will get your copies upp in the Air.
    You will receive them late this week.
    
    Oh Boys, it's sellin season here upp in the Tundra.
    Matti

    Well, well, well, note 3793 has now become the home of
    Golden Egg Enterprises :-). Business on the 3793...
    
    
    

    
    Matti,
    
       Just pulled the AlphaStation 250 4/266 "Golden Eggs" sheet that 
    was out on the Web. I'm impressed, so were the sales account reps
    I showed it to. Good job, how can we the field make "Corporate" aware
    so as to "push" them into providing some type of "offical" support for
    your efforts. I see this as a "tremendous" improvement over the tools
    that everyone is using today. It was creative, well thought out and
    will help in many ways. One of the biggest benefits I see is the
    reduction of time (big reduction) to put together a configuration and
    possibly a reduction in the number of configuration errors that are the
    result of missing something.  I have two questions (these were
    generated by the people I spoke too).
    
     1) Do your GOLDEN EGGS cover all of the Digital Hardware products?
    
    
     2) Once we place an order for these, are there some provisions for an
    update service (for new products)? How soon are GOLDEN EGGS sheets
    available for new products?
    
    That's it. Once again, GREAT JOB! 
    
    
    Rick C.
    Ford PTO Sales Support
    
    
    

    
    Matti,
    
       Thanks for responding back to my note. My only comment is that there
    should be some type of provision for "new product update" sheets.
    I don't know of how many cost centers will be willing to "re-purchase"
    a set of the entire "GOLDENEGGS" book each time, there's a new product
    announcement. Ideally, if corporate would "offically" support this
    effort, updates could be made available over the net with each 
    announcement. 
       Each person involved with the sale and configuration of systems would
    have a notebook (3 ring binder), that they could add these updates to. 
    This would also allow the retention of configuration guidelines for
    outdated/old systems. I can't tell you how many times we've had to look
    for old "SYSTEMS AND OPTIONS" catalogs to understand an older system
    that a customer is just getting around to upgrading.
    
    I see this tool as making life easier and allowing for more productivity
    among the sales teams and channels partners. 
    
    Which will  translate into more 
    time with the customer and more sales.... This is really refreshing to 
    see such creativity being applied towards helping with the way we do 
    business. The sales force has really been blamed/dumped on for the last few 
    years. All I do is look at the systems that we have in place for doing
    quotes, configuring systems, the entire information "infrastructure"
    and shake my head. I don't blame the sales force, the systems just aren't
    in place to support their effort. They say, "spend more time with the
    customers", but yet it takes forever to do a configuration and a quote.
    
     Golden Eggs goes along way toward improving this. Once again Matti,
    thanks for your efforts.
    
    Rick
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

Rick,

For the last six-seven years which I have been producing GOLDEN EGGS,
I have also kept an On-line library in our home node here in Helsinki.
This is the pointer:

HSKAPL::SYS$PUBLIC:[ANU]GOLDxxxxx.PS  (this is for active products) 

HSKAPL::SYS$PUBLIC:[ANU.OLD]GOLDxxxx.PS (old products in Maintenance)

These two directories contain all existing files/pages.
All new updates are dropped to the [ANU] directory. The recent
update is AlphaStation 250 4/266 =     GOLD2504266a.PS 

When a product gets in maintenance status, it will gradually be
moved to the [ANU.OLD] directory. This is where you can pick up
pages for MicroVAX 3300, DEC5100 etc....

In the Fresh, Rev20 GOLDEN EGGS Visual Configurations guide, there
are a bunch of brilliant Alpha pages. At this moment these pages 
are available in hard copy only. Price is $10/booklet in full 
Boxes of 50 copies.

(at this moment, this is the only way to get funding for this 
 0.2 man's World Wide GOLDEN EGGS Enterprise !!)

This is just a nominal price compared with the SELLING/ORDERING
power witch our Sales organisation can get using it. I know that
every DEC manager will be that responsive that his/her 
troops are equipped well enough to Sell our products. This applies
also to all MCS organisation too.

Matti

    
    Would it not be economically prudent to co-locate distribution nodes
    around the world, so we don't burn up a lot of dollars moving the same
    data, over and over and over...
    
    And for the record, this sounds like a GREAT tool, we so desparately
    need!  Now if we could get a MS-Windows driven version with ongoing
    updates, generate on-site quotes...
    
    Mike M.

    
   > Would it not be economically prudent to co-locate distribution nodes
   > around the world, so we don't burn up a lot of dollars moving the same
   > data, over and over and over...
    
    
    
    Um, kind of like putting it into TIMA?

Some answers to reply .26

rep.26    
    Would it not be economically prudent to co-locate distribution nodes
    around the world, so we don't burn up a lot of dollars moving the same
    data, over and over and over...

This sound very good and economical, why not. 
Until today I just have not managed to find any parties 
who are willing to do it and also pay for the material = the work
to do all information chasing and artwork. Up today my managers poor 
CC has swollowed all expenses.    

rep.26
    And for the record, this sounds like a GREAT tool, we so desparately
    need!  Now if we could get a MS-Windows driven version with ongoing
    updates, generate on-site quotes...

This is the right hit on the nail. This is what has happened all these 
six years. I originally tailored my symbol library for custom tailored
configurations. The main target were Quotes and Onsite documentation
for MSC. 
Customers are that happy when they get a nice configurtion diagram
from their CI-clusters or example three VAX DSSI-clusters. 
These diagrams highly courage our customers to expand their existing
systems. It is just like singing to add some disk or nodes in these
GOLDEN digrams. They really get nuts and open their wallets! for 
upgrades!!

Yester day I configured one AlphaServer 8200 system with a customer. 
We used GOLDEN EGGS hard copy diagrams as base configuration tool 
during phone conversations. Then I pushed the ideas into my 
VAXstation. After 15 minutes I had flashing diagram for a heavy
computing system with 4CPUs, 4GB mem, 29 disks, tape for 140GB. 
And all this hardware in one cabinet except the tape on floor pedestal.
This was just one piece of paper representing a system for 1 mega
dollars.
This diagram was a logical diagram plus cabinet layout on one glance.
In the afternoon I met this customer,reseller. In 20 minutes it was
clear to him what he was selling just a single day after TurboLaser 
was anounced. He immediately rocketed to his own customer!

This is the real reason why DEC shares are shooting up!
17.000 hard copies of GOLDEN EGGS Visual Configurations have landed
in the field.

Best regards from the 0.2 man's World Wide GOLDEN EGGS Enterprize,
Matti

PS. Next week I will add this diagram to the online libray.

>>  It is just like singing to add some disk or nodes in these GOLDEN digrams.
                    -------
    
    Uh Oh!  You mentioned this word in response to a reply from Mike  :-)
    
    Now we're probably gonna have to suffer through another GOLDEN OLDIE...
    
    Hey, maybe that's what you can call your archived files!

Hi!

Please find attached pointer to the diagram, which I mentioned
in reply 28.
This is a heavy one cabinet system plus external tape.
The file is a friendly PostScript for your printing.  

Matti
-------------------------

Directory HSKAPL::SYS$PUBLIC:[ANU]GOLDas82005300c.PS

GOLDAS82005300C.PS;1         383  18-APR-1995 17:55:57.00

Total of 1 file, 383 blocks.

    
    Hi
    The complete four page AlphaServer 8200 is ON-line.
    Please help your selves,
    Matti
    
         <<< KENT::PUBLIC:[NOTES$SERVER]TURBOLASER_MARKETING.NOTE;1 >>>
                           -< TurboLaser Marketing >-
================================================================================
Note 95.0                   8200 GOLDEN EGGS are here                 No replies
EEMELI::PATARI                                       31 lines  20-APR-1995 13:26
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear GOLDEN EGGS fans!

AlphaServer 8200 is here.
Please find the pointer to these fresh GOLDEN EGGS pages.
Four pages:

Page a  "base material" for AlphaServer 8200 with order numbers.
Page b  "OpenVNS DSSI Cluster, VAX 4000-600 and AlphaServer 8200.
Page c  "Heavy one cabinet Digital UNIX server 8200.
Page d  "Digital UNIX Cluster" two cabinets and DEC Safe.
         This diagram uses two GOLDEN EGGS presentation leyers,
         Logical Presentation and Technical Presentation.

Good selling,
Matti
----------------------------------

Directory HSKAPL::SYS$PUBLIC:[ANU]

GOLDAS82005300A.PS;3
                         516  20-APR-1995 17:26:43.00
GOLDAS82005300B.PS;3
                         483  20-APR-1995 14:21:37.00
GOLDAS82005300C.PS;3
                         382  20-APR-1995 19:55:55.00
GOLDAS82005300D.PS;3
                         433  20-APR-1995 19:42:25.00
GOLDSW300.PS;4           700  20-APR-1995 20:03:58.00

Total of 5 files, 2514 blocks.
                                                   

I have added some of the Matti's valuable Golden Eggs to:

	http://viima.fno.dec.com/

	You can find them under topic "New AlphaServer Systems"

	These are the on-line versions...

regards,
		-jari