OpenVMS (was Re: New subscriber)

OpenVMS/VAX V7.3 isn't that hard for Hobbyists to obtain, it's the version on the V3 VAX Hobbyist CD. I've been having problems getting a current Alpha Condist, my latest copy is 3-4 years old. Of course I think my most recent VAX (maybe my only VAX Condist), is from '98. The only two VAXen I have at home are running 5.5-2. Though I'm wishing the one was running 7.3 so I could cluster it with my primary Alpha. I've got my reasons for running HP TCPIP on my Alpha's, however, for VAXen, I'd recommend Multinet (I don't believe TCPware supports bridging DECnet), and I've been tempted to move to Multinet on my Alpha's as well. Even though VAX is stuck at 7.3, I believe it's still supported for clustering with Alpha and Itanium systems running 8.3. I'm still running 7.3-2 on my primary XP1000, my secondary XP1000 has 8.3 on it, but I've not even had time to install the license PAKs (needless to say the second system isn't powered on). If you're wondering what it will get you, I'd recommend looking at the release notes for V8.2 and V8.3. I believe one of the big selling points is greater ease in porting from Unix. IIRC, there are also some SMTP enhancements that I'm interested in. Oh, the HP supported Samba V3 is another big advantage. At the moment my big problem is I need a newer version of PHP and MySQL. One of these days when I have the time, I'll duplicate my system disk and upgrade my primary to V8.3, though I believe I might have to include a RDB upgrade in that plan. I'd been holding off waiting for a version of RDB that supports V8.3 (been out for a couple months at least), and for a reason to retire Pathworks for Mac (Appletalk). The DST patches gave me a reason to retire Appletalk from my system. Appletalk was keeping me at a low patchlevel on 7.3-2 and keeping me from upgrading my Mac past 10.3.9, now I need to find time to upgrade the OS on both systems. Zane