VMS help file - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

12 Feb 2002

Last night I finally got a cable sorted (thanks Pete!) to connect the VS3100
to a "VT52" (Atari ST running the emulator!), and was chuffed to find it's
a
healthy 16Mb Model 30 with two hard disks and VMS 5.5-2 installed.
Unfortunately my old mate "HELP" doesn't want to play with me any more:

$ HELP
%HELP-F-OPENIN, error opening SYS$COMMON:[SYSHLP]HELPLIB.HLB as input

Rats. I was pretty much counting on HELP working to help dust off the
cobwebs :-)
I'm guessing it's not installed because the machine was configured to boot
...
 from the network (ESA0). A SHOW DEV revealed a couple
of disks ("DKA200" and "DKA300") and luckily it boots VMS from
DKA300 no trouble. I reset the
SYSTEM password OK, so now I've got a system to play with but no HELP to
make life easier :-)

So, a few questions to help me on my way:

- are there VMS equivalents of 'find' and 'grep' to set loose on the
disks
to look for this file?
- if the help file isn't on either disk, would somebody be able to send me a
copy?
- I'd like to find out more about how VMS boots, can someone point me at a
good website?

Finally, at the moment I don't have a suitable CD drive to be able to
install the Hobbyist OpenVMS. When VMS boots it displays:

%LICENSE-I-EXCEEDED, attempted usage exceeds active license limits

Is there a limit to the number of logins allowed after expiry? Am I going to
get locked out? :-}

Cheers,
Al.