[HECnet] HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing

[Thomas DeBellis]

Gee wiz, that stinks.  Lose anything?  Any chance of recovery? (I'm not 
familiar with the RD53).  No matter how long it takes, we always seem to 
learn, 'do regular backups' the (unexpected) hard way.  Two anecdotes 
(from actual experience):

  * A crashed disk will always take down at least two or more disk
    drives and at least one other disk because it will be put into a
    working drive to determine if it or the original drive has failed,
    this crashes the head assembly on the 'test' drive which then ruins
    the working media that had been taken out.
  * Unless both performed regularly _and_ verified regularly, backups,
    won't.
  * A tape drive will always break just before signs of disk failure. 
    This is why you must have two tape drives.

I was in the machine room one day assisting our systems assurance folks 
in banging down some lines for another DH11 (we were getting some 
'ringing' at higher speeds).  I happened to notice that one of our 
TU45's was doing a 'strange' amount of rewrites on a particular tape.  
Closer inspection revealed that it was the previous evening's 
incremental backup.  Started (automatically) at 2:00 AM, it still hadn't 
finished by Noon, more than twice the usual time.

I first thought to abort and re-queue the backup and give the drive a 
good cleaning (and maybe a chance to catch its breath). Once I had done 
the re-queue, I looked at the tape and noticed it was over 4 years old 
and seen regular bi-weekly service for all that time.  A TU55 DECtape 
will laugh at that kind of usage; they used to test the redundancy logic 
by un-spooling them and driving a car over the media.  Not so 1600 BPI 
magtape.

That day, we started rotating all our backup tapes out for new ones.  
That took about two months (12 tapes for daily bi-weekly incrementals, 
30 for bi-weekly full and another 30 for bi-monthly fulls).  I kept 
wondering what was going to break before we finished the rotation, but 
incredibly, nothing did. It must have known I was watching...

To this day, the 20's have quarterly batch backup, one backs up to 
another.  Other systems backup to OneDrive.

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> On 3/7/20 11:26 AM, Zane Healy wrote:
>
>> On Mar 7, 2020, at 7:44 AM, Robert Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com 
>> <mailto:bob at jfcl.com>> wrote:
>>
>>   For older VAXes there is always the option of running VMS v4.x, 
>> which is pre-LMF.  I know VMS4 supported the MicroVAX-II; can’t 
>> remember if it ever supported the MicroVAX-III.  Somebody will have 
>> to dig up an SPD for VMS 4.7.
>> Bob
>
> VAX/VMS 4.x runs on the MicroVAX-III.  I booted it once on my KA-650, 
> when I got it.  Then when I went to back it up, the RD53 died.
>
> Zane
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