KROON@HGRRUG51.BITNET (Peter A. Kroon. KVI) (09/28/86)
Some time ago I asked for experiences of people who had upgraded their
750/780/785 to VMS V4.4 before replacing their hardware by a 8200/8300.
The reason that I was a little afraid of doing so was that the VMS V4.4
upgrade procedure might leave some VAXBI specific VMS components out
because it knew that it was upgrading a non-VAXBI machine.
The replies we got (including DEC's reply) was that theoretically one could
do the 4.4 upgrade before replacing the 780 by a 8300, but noone was sure
about it and recommanded to install a virgin 4.4 on the 8300 and than
do the local tailoring.
We have tried the dangerous way and it worked out well:
1. Apply the VMS V4.4 upgrade to the 780 with V4.3 preserving
all the local tailoring.
2. Before the hardware upgrade, deactivate the pieces in SYSTARTUP.COM
and in particular SYCONFIG.COM that might cause problems on the
8300. In our case we removed the loading of user written device drivers
for special non-DEC interfaces (CAMAC, DR11-C driven plotter).
3. Replace the 780 CPU by a 8300.
4. Boot the 8300 from the 780 VMS V4.4 disks.
5. Serve the Champagne.
The only problem was that we had to re-install VAX/RSX because the
installation on the 780 left out the Compatibility Mode Emulator.
Peter A. Kroon, KVI, Groningen, Netherlands.