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

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2021-12-09 01:56, Tony Nicholson wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 9, 2021 at 11:32 AM Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net 
> <mailto:nf6x at nf6x.net>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>      > On Dec 8, 2021, at 4:00 PM, Tony Nicholson
>     <tony.nicholson at computer.org <mailto:tony.nicholson at computer.org>>
>     wrote:
>      >
>      > 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?
> 
> 
> 
> Te old VAX-11/780 TOY clock didn't store the year.  Instead it was 
> stored and loaded from the system disk file system (one of the files in 
> [000000] - I can't remember the exact details).  Every year in January 
> we had to do a "SET TIME" command to update it.

I think it's the same on all VAXen.
But usually you did not have to do a set time, since the file was/is 
normally getting updated time stamps during normal operation as well, if 
I remember right. But the logic will only work if the machine is 
rebooted within roughly a year since it was shut down. Else the year 
will be wrong.

> The Y2K update kits supported V5.5-2 and later.

While I'm sure there were various Y2K bugs around, the basic design in 
VMS was intended from day 0 to handle dates beyond Y2K.
So I would just try to set the correct date to start with, and if 
something seriously breaks, then I would consider shifting it back to an 
earlier year.

   Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol