HP TO REPAIR WORKSTATIONS AND SERVERS AFFECTED BY MANUFACTURING-PROCESS FLAW; Problem Has Been Corrected; Impact on Small Percentage of Certain Systems

Business Wire, April 26, 1995

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 1995-- Hewlett-Packard Company today announced that it has discovered and corrected a manufacturing-process flaw that affects the behavior of a small percentage of HP 9000 workstation models currently installed at customer sites. The same flaw may affect a small percentage of HP 9000 and HP 3000 servers as well. The vast majority of HP's workstations and servers are not affected by this manufacturing-process flaw.

The flaw can result in inconsistent system behavior, that is, with a "system machine check" message or data corruption in fewer than 20,000 HP systems worldwide.

HP is advising customers of potentially affected systems to immediately contact the HP Response Center or their local sales office for further information and direction. If it's determined that a system is affected, HP will incur the costs associated with repair or replacement.

HP said it does not expect this issue to have a significant financial impact on the company.

From customer reports and HP's own testing, the company said a limited number of individual units of HP 9000 Model 735/125 and 755/125 workstations -- including cluster configurations -- were found to be affected.

Certain other HP workstations and servers also use parts manufactured by this process, although to date, there have been no reports of problems from customers of the following systems: -0-

     o    HP 9000 Model 735/99, 755/99, 747i/100 and 745i/100
          workstations shipped or processor boards replaced since
          November 1994;
     o    HP 9000 G/H/I model 50, 60 and 70 servers shipped or
          processor boards replaced since October 1994; and
     o    HP 3000 987/RX/SX, 987/150/RX/SX and 987/200/RX/SX
          servers shipped or processor boards replaced since
          October 1994.