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HP OpenVMS Systemsask the wizard |
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The Question is: Is there any way (supported or not) to get VMS V5.4 running on a VAX 4000-500? The Answer is : As you are likely aware from the table of minimum versions for supported platforms -- a table referenced in the OpenVMS FAQ, in the section entitled "What version of OpenVMS do I need?" -- and also obviously by your own experimentation, support for this particular VAX system was added in an OpenVMS VAX release after the release which you attempted to bootstrap. Support for an arbitary VAX or Alpha platform involves adding support for the host processor, the errors that can arise, the format of the interrupts, and details of the system and I/O configuration. The effort is non-trivial, in other words. (If the VAX platform does closely emulate an earlier supported platform, then this support effort is obviously reduced.) While support for this platform could theoretically be backported (an event which is exceedingly unlikely), that effort would be roughly equivilent to patching the version number of a more current release back to V5.4. If you wish to entertain the use of V1.0 or V5.4 or V10.0 on this platform, details on setting an arbitary release version string are included in the OpenVMS FAQ section "Changing the OpenVMS Version Number?". (This version hackery is, of course, roughly as unsupported as the use of V5.4 would be on this platform -- though the latter hackery is admittedly rather likely to function than the former.)
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