Jeffrey S. Worley wrote: Actually this is pretty easy I'm guessing. Do you have the DW-MOTIF PAK loaded? You'll need this and the OPENVMS-ALPHA PAK at a minimum loaded. Or is your question on how to get and load the licenses. The down side is if you're at the DECwindows login screen and you don't have DW-MOTIF loaded you'd better have a terminal that you can hook up to the VAXstation so you can load the DW-MOTIF PAK. I'm embarrased to admit I went through this problem this week when setting up a test box. Zane

On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 01:24:19AM -0400, THETechnoid(a)home.com wrote: There are two separate license applications you can request through the Montagar website. One is for the OpenVMS operating system itself, which I assume you have loaded onto the system. Just getting the license in the mail isn't enough, you need to actually load the license into the system. For a VAX, you will need to load the VAX-VMS license PAK. You will also need to load the DECwindows Motif license PAK. You get this license by requesting the Layered Products Licenses from Montagar's website. On the license request page, there is a pull-down menu that says "License Type:". You can choose "OpenVMS VAX", "OpenVMS Alpha", or "Layered Products". I assume you've already chosen "OpenVMS VAX" for the VAX-VMS license PAK. Good. Now you need to choose "Layered Products" to request the layered products licenses. There are a bunch of layered products licenses. I don't know what they all are. The one you want to load on your system is "DW-MOTIF". Unfortunately, to get yourself back to a state where you can load the licenses, you need to get VMS to load without going into DECwindows. The quickest way to do this is run the system console on the serial line and attach a terminal. That way the terminal becomes the OPA0: device and you can use it to log in as SYSTEM to do system maintenance (like loading the DW-MOTIF and VAX-VMS licenses as needed). If you DON'T have a terminal, you're not completely out of luck. Damn, I don't remember exactly how to do this, but you can do a conversational boot (which is done with a flag of /1 I think, so you'd do something like [or whatever your system disk is] Then you'll find yourself at the SYSBOOT> prompt. Issue the commands SYSBOOT> SET/STARTUP OPA0: SYSBOOT> SET WINDOW_SYSTEM 0 SYSBOOT> CONTINUE The system should continue to start up without DECwindows. Log in as SYSTEM and load your licenses. Finally type $ RUN SYS$SYSTEM:SYSGEN to get to the SYSGEN> prompt. At the SYSGEN> prompt, type: SYSGEN> USE CURRENT SYSGEN> SET WINDOW_SYSTEM 1 SYSGEN> WRITE CURRENT SYSGEN> EXIT And then reboot. I _think_ this will work, but I'm not 100% certain, as it's been a while since I did any of this stuff! To load a license, log in as SYSTEM and type $ @SYS$UPDATE:VMSLICENSE [I think... it's been a while] and follow the prompts. Fill in the appropriate questions with the appropriate fields from your license PAK. It's menu-driven. Anyway, I sure hope this helps. Good luck, and happy VMSing! -Seth

On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 11:01:27AM -0700, Zane H. Healy wrote: [...] Ah, you're right. These are two different ways of doing the same thing, though yours is probably cleaner! Doing "SET WRITESYSPARAMS 0" means "Don't save these changes between boots", so he can just enter his licences and reboot without needing to run a second SYSGEN afterward. -Seth

http://www.montagar.com/hobbyist/mount.html I ordered both online the day V2 became available, got them shortly thereafter. Zane | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator | | healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast | | healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 01:28:43PM -0500, Bob Brown wrote: Wow, that's not cool. The last time I renewed my DECUS membership they were very very fast. Oh my. I just went to the DECUS website to find "Encompass -- A Compaq Users Group". I don't read everything DECUS sends me, but I have no idea how I could have missed this. I'd say give them another try, they may have lost your application in the shuffle to rebrand themselves for their new corporate Uber-Being. Go to http://www.decus.org/encompass/Membership/member-info.shtml and apply again, you should have a membership number in a few days. I hope. -Seth

On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 01:23:10PM -0700, healyzh(a)aracnet.com wrote: Basically the gist of it was, they needed to form an actual corporation for legal reasons - like they'd lost about $600K on some trade show from a company that didnt pay them, and since DECUS wasnt a "recognized" legal entity, they couldnt sue to get the money - so they reorganized into encompass, which is a legal corporation or somesuch. -- Bill Bradford mrbill(a)mrbill.net Austin, TX

At 12:27 PM 10/29/00 -0800, Mike Ford wrote: If they are 1MB x 36 (aka True Parity SIMMS) I'd be happy (and other folks here on the list) might be happy to get a few them (like 10 :-). These are used in the VAX 4000/VLC and are the only type supported. --Chuck

Hi! just mount it, set def to the directory and then do a dir. But why don't you look at my OpenVMS-Howto (www.freddym.org/en_vmsht_fnc.html)? Basic things are described there. And there are some other good VMS-Howtos on the Net. $help product It's very easy. Important dir's are sys$system (System Files and executables in it) sys$startup (Startup files) sys$update (Files such as vmsinstal ...) If you have any additional more specific questions, I'll be glad to help you. A bit. But it's very nice. -- Best Regards, Freddy Geek Code 3.1: GCS s+: a--- C+++ UBOU+++ P-- E--- W++ N w--- V++ PGP- t? 5? tv ===================================================================== Frederik Meerwaldt ICQ: 83045387 Homepage: http://www.freddym.org Bavaria/Germany OpenVMS and Unix Howtos and much more FREEBSD, NETBSD, OPENBSD, TRU64, OPENVMS, ULTRIX, BEOS, LINUX

Bill Pechter wrote: Have you seen the 'joe' editor? It's my ASCII editor of choice on UNIX systems, as it uses the Wordstar keybindings. I hated Wordstar but got used to the keybindings thanks to various Borland products. Shoot I'm a UNIX SysAdmin by profession, DEC OS's are just my hobby and these days VMS is my preferred OS! Zane | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator | | healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast | | healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

Dec DID have the campuswide Software Licence Grant. Both my undergrad and graduate schools had these and ran Vaxen running VMS. This is where I learned to be such a VMS bigot. :) The problem is in the late 80s and early 90s they started jerking colleges around with the program - raising the prices, reducing the layered products - not understanding that at a university it really DOES make sense to rip out and throw away years of work and run BSD on Vaxen instead of paying extra support charges. And as you say, once you infect people with unix while they still think its obtuseness and inconsistancy are fun, you've lost them. What kills me is what Compaq has done (or not bothered to do, in this case). They have the hardware and operating systems to *own* the server market. Alphas with VMS on them would make infinately better servers than NT for any purpose I can think of. But they seem unwilling to provide much more than lukewarm support for the VMS world they now own. You have to wonder how abusive Microsoft's licences are for them. Some days I really do think most of whats wrong with computing today can be put at Microsoft's doorstep. Between their marketing, their (illegal) licensing schemes, and the reactions of the computing community to these scams - namely the wholesale embrace of Linux, which brings up all the warts of Unix mentioned above, but is at least free - it seems like they caused a lot of it, at least in the US. Don't even get me started with what they did to BeOS. Anyway. Back to the topic... If there's a good side to corpate computing embracing unix and winblows, it's that vaxen and other classic machines wind up in our hands while they still have plenty of years of running time left, and we can personally benefit from what used to be thriving user communities and software. (the Decus libraries are what I'm thinking of here, does this kind of thing exist for other machines and OSs?) That's got to be worth something. -- Jim Strickland jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BeOS Powered! -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Neil Cherry wrote: I'm guessing you're after the VAX Hobbyist CD. I personally think it's better than the Alpha one (what can I say I'm interested in BASIC not what they substituted for it on the Alpha CD). One thing you'll still want to keep your eye out for is a Software Product Library set on CD-ROMs. They show up on eBay from time to time and can fetch anywhere from $9.99 to about $200.00. Zane

I am definetly interested! -Bob Bob Brown Saved by grace Intranet Sysadmin Page: http://info1.harper.cc.il.us/~bbrown

Just for fun I figured I'd give Compaq a call (1-800-DIGITAL still works!) and get pricing information on the latest VAX OpenVMS software releases. Just the VAX OpenVMS 7.2-1 software and online documentation kit (something like 10 CDs, order number QA-XULAA-H8) is $314.00. I imagine the current ConDist is proportionally expensive. Ouch. I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for one on eBay, or for free, or something else. -Seth

Jerome Fine replies: If you think that is bad, try the full distribution of V5.07 of RT-11 which Mentec and Compaq/DEC still sell at $ US 1600.00 with the Qbus license on top of that for about $ US 900 and again that is just the operating system. Part of the answer might be that the DOCs are still all in paper. Also, I suspect that DEC still has the copyright on the V5.06 DOC set which could account for the most significant portion of the $ US 1600.00, but those DOCs are mostly over 10 years old with the 1992 V5.06 being mostly a new combination of the material into more and smaller manuals. Of course, FORTRAN and C are extra. There is no dBase - use RDB! No decent word processor, etc. Not even a decent editor like EVE/TPU on VMS although probably KED has a few things. So save your pennies. Incidentally, I am finally looking seriously at Y2K patches for the hobby V5.03 of RT-11, but if possible I would like to go much further - up to Y10K if possible. I have not yet determined if it is even technically feasible to predict when the Gregorian Modification (only century years divisible by 400 are leap years) will not only break down, but do so in a manner which is not predictable. Now this will not happen until after year 4000 C.E. (Gregorian), so I would appreciate some feedback, not only from RT-11 hobby users, but also from the general list! Does anyone feels that if Y2K patches are being done for an operating system and the code can be extended up to the year 9999 C.E., should I just ignore the problems associated with too many leap years being present. Note that this affects just two areas. The rollover of a day from February 28th to the next day when the year is a century year divisible by 400. Also, if the banner in MACRO is displaying the date and time, the day of the week is also displayed, as is the day of the week displayed in LINK and LIBR. One solution is to just ignore the problem. It is also possible to make a reasonable attempt which can probably be done up to at least 6000 C.E. Most likely, just omit the leap years at 4000 C.E. and 6000 C.E., but it might be necessary to omit additional leap years between 4000 C.E. and 6000 C.E. The final possibility is to allow the user to have a table to schedule the omitted leap years. Is anyone familiar with leap seconds in VMS at the end of June and December? A current best estimate table could be set up and the user could modify it when corrections are available sometime in the next 2000 years. I realize that this latter part is quite off-topic on a relative basis and I apologize, but V5.03 is from 1985 and needs at least the Y2K patches for hobby users now. I can't see a better time to extend the Y2K code all the way to Y10K if any extension beyond 2099 C.E. is being considered. The extra effort to do the work is probably much less than the effort to solve the associated technical problems and even both should no more than double the total work of just the Y2K patches by themselves if it is all being done at the same time. It would really be appreciated if anyone who is reading this would at least take a minimum couple of minutes to express their opinion on the issue. Thanks in advance if you do!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At least this OFF TOPIC is actually very serious, at least it is to many of us even though we will not be around to check on the results. But, is not one of the primary goals of preservation to save both hardware and software to be around to be used in the future. What better method can be found than to ensure that when the current Y2K patches, put out for only commercial users of V5.07 of RT-11, expire AND few, if any experts are still around to make additional bug fixes, RT-11 will be all ready to continue far into the future without any changes. I agree that there probably will not be any hardware to run PDP-11 software, but perhaps. After all, they are still looking at and attempting to understand languages that are 3000 years old, why not RT-11, especially if someone took the trouble to allow the then current year to be entered - or at least the equivalent date on the assumption the calendar will probably not last that long in any case. Besides, it really would be a lot of fun. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

That is just where I was stuck. My solution was to log in as user SYSTEST which gave the same complaint (from motif that it wasn't PAKed), but then dropped me to a command prompt where I was able to register Motif. I posted a note on how all this stuff works so others can go through the process a little more smoothly than I did. BTW, my vaxstation 4000/60 is PICKY as HELL when it comes to what drives it will use. I tried several makes/models of scsi drives until I found that only my two Quantum scsi drives work correctly. I think DEC must have been buying Quantum hdd's for thier machines..? Not to mention that it doesn't like any of my cdrom drives that are jumperable for 512byte blocks (at least not for the install). The machine would boot from ANY of my cdroms to the standalone backup DCL prompt, but when I initiated the restore it would bomb in a big way. I had to get an RRD40 to get the install to go. Creating a DD image of the cd on another hard disk did similar things. I've got a bid going for several rrd40 cartridges. I had to take the drive apart to get the CD into it..... Thanks, Jeff In <200010270457.VAA01723(a)shell1.aracnet.com>om>, on 10/28/00 at 11:39 AM, healyzh(a)aracnet.com said: -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey S. Worley President Complete Computer Services, Inc. 30 Greenwood Rd. Asheville, NC 28803 828-277-5959 THETechnoid(a)home.com -----------------------------------------------------------