11 Sep
2000
11 Sep
'00
11:52 p.m.
From: John Allain <John.Allain(a)donnelley.infousa.com>
They alluded that VAXen ship with hardware ID's,
something that I had forgotten years ago
Yes they do.
software is new or near new copies, then some VAX
architectures with limited disk or memory would
not be able to run it -- and without being able
to re-HWID old SW copies, they could not be made
to run on other configs, even exact matches.
re-hwid??? whats that. All I do is use a machine that I can
do a VMSbuild on to my spec, no biggie.
The biggest issue with recent copies of VMS is device
support for acient devices. The key here is SUPPORTED
as een unsuppported acient device drivers are often included.
Anybody know if:
All VAXes have HWIDs? Even micros?
Yep, and yep.
Is it possible for some Third trusted party
to permit back revision VMS copies to run
on different copies of HW with other CPUID's?
Why? old copies of VMS are still around and they are not
locked nor are new ones. You only need a license pak.
DECs use of HWID was to make sure there was hw/sw support
for things like what ()-float types the machine supported and
what instructions needed trap emulation. Newer versions lise
all older machines and the only case where thish could be a
problem is if you were trying to run V3.6 on a VAX10000
not the reverse such as 7.2 on a 11/750.
Allison