[foxboro] RE : Barriers to migration to Windows

To all the UNIX gurus migrating to Micro$oft Windoze,

My first I/A was 6.1 under WinNT. It was the first time I worked with a DCS, 
as my previous experience only involved PLCs and SCADAs.

At first I was shocked at the (unnecessary) complexity of the system (by the 
way I had no training and had to learn the hard way by myself), and one of 
the things I disliked most was the mix between Windoze and Unix 
applications, exceed and the MKS toolkit. Don't get me wrong: I like Unix, 
Linux in particular, but I also like clean solutions. Windoze apps in 
Windoze, Unix apps in Unix. Documentation didn't help much (I never knew if 
a manual like "human interface calls" applied only to Unix or was also 
valid, at least to some extent, for the NT version).

Anyway, one knew that out there there was THE REAL THING.... THE UNIX 
VERSION, where all the weird things were natural, and I only had the cheap 
version of THE SYSTEM.
Now Foxboro has decided to kill THE REAL THING, and we are left with the 
latest version of THE CHEAP VERSION, which is not so cheap after all (we 
paid $75000 for a Dell Server that is worth some $15000 for the rest of the 
world). I think that the least they should have done was to build the whole 
thing from scratch and do away with exceed, the emulated shell, ICC, SYSTEM 
MONITOR, etc. Besides, the performance of the 8.x system is the same or 
worse as our previous 6.5.1 NT running on Pentium II PC's.

It doesn't surprise me that migrated UNIX users are complaining about the 
things they have lost. And know what? They aren't going to get any 
solutions.

I've been training two young engineers during the last months. At times it 
is almost impossible to explain the way things are done in the I/A. If you 
can't find a good explanation for something, then it is probably done the 
wrong way.

If I had to advise somebody I would say:
- The new I/A falls in the category of "Not recommended for new designs" 
products
- If you have a small I/A system, and need to upgrade, consider changing to 
another product
- If you have a large I/A system, and need to upgrade, well..... you are 
dead, my friend.

Regards
Pablo Lioi

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