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(1) HSx50

    First, let me describe the differences between HSx40 and HSx50;
            . i960-CA replaced with i960-CF
            . FX-2 and FX-3 replaced with FX-4
            . current WriteBack Cache and on-board battery replaced with
              new WriteBack Cache (up to 128M) and External Cache Battery

    For HSx50, we are pretty sure about HSJ50 and HSD50. Two days ago, we were
    pretty sure about not building a HSZ50, but we were recommended to build
    a HSZ50 yesterday by Larry Huber, our Marketeer. 

    For V.NEXT, we were pretty sure about 'it runs on HSJ50, HSD50 and HSZ40'.
    But, today, V.NEXT is going to run on HSJ/D/Z50. It changed bacause the 
    introduction of HSZ50. For our installed base, there will be a maintenance
    release after V.NEXT to take care it.

    V.NEXT and HSx50 are going to be anounced in July, so we need to get them
    ready by end of May. Therefore Field Test needs to start sometime in April.

    FX-4? Do you know what that is? FX-4 is one of our chip on the controller
    handling XOR. We have a very limited quantity in our hand at this time
    until May'96 which is not in time to build HSx50 pilots for Field Test.

    Due to the 'very limited quantity' of FX-4, the very first question we
    have is that 'how many pilot we can build' and 'how many pilot we need'.
    
    Here are the questions to both of you. 
    1. can you help us to qualify our HSx50 in this time frame, starting at 
       April and ending in June.
    2. How many and minimum pilot Field Test units you think you need, for 
       helping us to qualify the HSJ, D and Z 50 respectively. 
   
    Can you get back to me ASAP, say before end Tuesday? THANKS a MILLION!   
    
(2) V.NEXT functionality list

    We had a BIG meeting (involving all our business program managers) 
    yesterday. The following is the list of agreed functions in V.NEXT 
    (which we want to call it V5.0 on the HSx50 platforms).

    Our current plan is to start FT at begin April and release to MFG at 
    end MAY.

    Most of the code is done. We are in debugging phase.

    Per our discussion, Bill, 02/23/96, I have removed Remote DCD from this
    list. We will start Remote DCD with GryPhon FT code beg June in preparation
    of our next maintence release and Gryphon's November release. 

 
       Known functionality list                   J D Z
       ------------------------                   _ _ _
      p0 drives <=120 GB                          x x x (no drive available for
                                                         test yet)
      p0 SCSI Multi-bus failover                      x (received code from 
                                                         Knight on 02/21/96)
      p0 units failover when battery bad              x (J/D: handled by os)
      p0 Partitioning                             x x x (mutual exclusive from
                                                         SCSI Multi-bus failover.
                                                         Okay by Knight 02/22/96)
      p1 Config Save On Disk                      x x   (only avail on Z v2.7)
      p0 Includes patches in Config Save on Disk  x x x (Z p0, J/D p1)
      p0 Host Port 720 Reselection Workaround         x
      p0 DSSI Static Credit Management              x
      p0 DSTAT                                    x x x
      p0 CMDisk dyn mem alloc                     x x
      p0 CI 4K packets                            x     (CIPCA only)
      p0 Larger Cache 32M/64M/128M on HSJ/D/Z50   x x x
      p0 ECB handling on HSJ/D/Z50                x x x 
      p0 FX-4                                     x x x
      p0 Performance Enhancements, host port      x x   (Z's done v2.7)
      p1 Performance Enhancements, sequential readx x x
      p1 Faster Storageset Initialization         x x x
      p1 Code Image Compression                   x x x
      p1 Tape device microcode update             x x x
      p1 Multi-disk formatter                     x x x
      p1 Cache Flush via SCSI                         x (for SNI only)
      p1 Failover Unit Attention Handling             x (for SNI only)
      p1 CLI type-ahead/recall/cmd-line editing   x x x
      p1 HP-set SCSI speed                            x
      p1 DS-set SCSI speed                        x x x