[HECnet] Oldest VAX/VMS for VAX-11/730 on HECNET

[Mark J. Blair]

> On Dec 8, 2021, at 4:00 PM, Tony Nicholson <tony.nicholson at computer.org> wrote:
> 
> The VAX/VMS DECnet license "key" for old versions (V4.7 and prior) came in the form of a saveset (on a TK50 or magtap) that you installed.  It did a binary patch on the NETACP.EXE image to enable things. There are separate versions for routing and end-node configurations.

Ah, thank you. I was wondering how that worked.

> The thing that bothers me running old versions of VAX/VMS is the lack of Y2K updates.  You will probably need to boot with a date last century (subtract 28 years to get matching calendar days) to avoid some gotchas.  For VAX/VMS V3.0 there may have been some mandatory upgrade patches too.

When I installed 3.0 on an emulation, it decided that it must be 1982. Do you know what the earliest versions with y2k support would be?

> I have the VAX/VMS V4.7 mandatory patches and DECnet "key" for a routing node should you need them.

Thanks, I'll let you know if I need to take you up on that. In another context, I've been slipped the items to enable DECnet on 3.4 and later, so I'll probably see if I can have the kind of excitement I'm looking for in a 3.4-3.7 release. I'll also try playing with something in the 4.x series. I'm not sure exactly what I want out of my 730, but I think that version 7.3 is awfully big and newfangled for it.


-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
https://www.nf6x.net/