I can't speak to changing 'doomsday' time frames, but the z10 end-of-marketing demise occurred in two phases about six months apart. In the first phase, the customer could no longer buy any *new* hardware features. In the final phase, the customer could no longer *activate* any hardware feature--such as a CP--already purchased but left inactivated, a strategy not uncommon for dealing with soaring software costs.
On one older box we had bought an extra CP that we never got around to activating before end-of-marketing. A that time we were not allowed to activate it even though we owned it. Our management took this issue up the IBM ladder fairly high to no avail. When we finally upgraded to the next new thing, IBM did give us credit in the deal for the never-used CP. I hope that this accommodation is standard practice. . . JO.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 626-302-7535 Office 323-715-0595 Mobile jo.skip.robin...@sce.com From: "R.S." <r.skoru...@bremultibank.com.pl> To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU, Date: 11/10/2012 08:25 AM Subject: Re: z10BC Memory Upgrade All-But Impossible Sent by: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> W dniu 2012-11-10 01:59, Edward Jaffe pisze: > A memory upgrade is both hardware (the physical DIMMs) and microcode > (enabling the memory). I vaguely remember that EU just have prohibited such approach. The sentention was that if you BOUGHT (not leased or borrowed) the hardware, then it is ALL YOURS and no feature can be limited by vendors locks in microcode. Note, in this case a customer wants to buy some parts and insert it into HIS OWN piece of hardware. There is similar situation with DASD arrays. 10 years ago in order to change something you had to know "service passwords" (who remembers hrchodm-forcibly? ;-) ). Nowadays the password is dynamically generated for given s/n and period of time. HOWEVER, when warranty expire, customer may request to unlock the device and since then he can do a maintenance on once own (or using 3rd party services). In general it's very important issue regarding IP (Intelectual Property) and customers rights: Do you want to decide what channel you want to see on your TV set or you accept that vendor can lock some of them? Or maybe after 4 years you will have to dispose your TV set and buy new one just because of microcode "time bomb"? Or maybe your printer will not print everything you want, but partially what secret service want? Or you cannot watch a movie, bought in Tokyo, just because you live in Warsaw? BTW: all of the examples above are not fictitious (some minor etails mismatched). -- Radoslaw Skorupka Lodz, Poland P.S. Fortunately I still can buy memory to my PC without asking vendor for permission. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
