[Info-vax] Compatible DVDs

[John Santos]

In case anyone has never noticed, the HP web site is
"Hopelessly Pathetic".

I'm trying to configure a system for a customer (actually,
we've already done so, the order is ready to go in, just
trying to cross a few t's.)

Amongst other things, it consists of an rx2660 (VMS, of
course) and 3 Proliant DL165 PC's (two running Solaris
X86 and one Linux, for various historical reasons.)

Anyway, all 4 boxes have writable DVD drives, and I'm
trying to tell the customer what kind of DVD media to
get, DVD+R, DVD-R, etc., so naturally I want to specify
something that will work on all 4 drives.

The rx2660 has an AD143A drive and the 3 DL165's have
447891-B21 drives.

There appears to be *absolutely no* information on this
subject on the HP web site.  The closest thing is the
quick-spec for the rx3600 (different server, but the same
drive), which says HP-UX (some version) only does DVD+R's,
but it isn't clear if this is a drive restriction or an
HP-UX restriction, and if it is an HP-UX restriction, if
it only applies to some old version of HP-UX or to the
current version (not being familiar HP-UX version numbering,
lack of "or later" or "or earlier" or "before version xxx"
in the note renders it useless.  But if it applies to *all*
versions of HP-UX, why the hell did they bother to include
a version number in the note?)

Almost all the links Google found were for places willing
to sell me the various drives, but none of the ones I checked
had any technical info; if anything, they just pointed me
back to the HP site.

The HP links Google found when I added "site:hp.com" either
pointed to a useless picture of the drive (with all the 
documentation links resulting in "No documentation found"),
or to sales pages citing prices in British Pounds.  (I'm
in the USA?!?)  Or to more non-documentation pages at the
hp sites in either Malaysia or Thailand!?!?!

I finally found something that looked remotely like technical
docs on the HP site, and it was, but the wrong sort.  It was
a nice set of pictures and text describing how to install
the 447891 drive in a PC.  But no links to specs or anything
actually useful.  (Though the pictures were nicer than those
in the installation sheet that came with the same drive on
another system, which I happen to have a copy of.)

This page had a feedback form at the bottom of it, which I
tried to use, but when I clicked "submit", it came back with
a page not found.

What a waste of several hours;  I could have driven to MicroCenter,
bought a bunch of DVD's of each variety, brought them all with
me to the customer site next month (when the system will get
installed), and tested them all in each drive to see which
ones work, cheaper than trying to surf for the info.

The helpful (non-HP?) people who brought us CDRECORD probably
know just what kind of media work best with the VMS drive,
but does anyone know for the different (and probably incompatible)
Proliant drive?


-- 
John Santos
Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc.