KVC@engvax.UUCP (09/07/85)
> I need to find out what version of Micro-VMS is required to run on a > uVAX-II processor. All uVAX-IIs I've had my hands on have been running > 4.2x (field test version). I believe the minumum required is a patched V4.1, called V4.1M. A recently received (yesterday) uVAX-II that I know of came with a license for 1-8 user V4.1M, but no V4.1M itself. Did they hide it? > Also, how many people have gotten a 4.2 kit (for either VMS or uVMS) > and what experiences have they had. Well, I just finished installing V4.2 on our 780 here. Also, I helped out on an installation on a 750 last night. That one was a disaster. First I'll talk about the one this afternoon, since it was probably (you better hope!) more typical of an installation. In general everything seemed to go ok. One thing that I noted on both installations. After humming along with PHASE I, when the system gets ready to reboot the first time it gets an error during the shutdown trying to activate the image NCP, which it has deleted. This may NOT happen if you start with a system that does not have any trace of DECnet running. I just did a SET EXEC STATE SHUT before the install, but it still tried to run NCP to shutdown something. Anyway, after the error it bombs out and prompts with "_$" on the console (like it did an "@OPA0:" and expects you to type in DCL commands to shutdown the system. I just did a ^P HALT, and everything worked OK for me after the next reboot. If you're installing on a 780, make sure your floppy drive can both read and write diskettes ok. Mine can't write too well, so the floppy it made to boot a system rooted in [SYSF...] got floppy errors. I had to type in the VMS bootstrap by hand putting the proper things in the registers. After that, it all worked ok with my old floppy, since I guess it only needed the funny DEFBOO.CMD the first time. I left the bad new floppy in the drive when it looked like it wanted to write, so I wouldn't write on my good old floppy. The old VMS V4.0-created floppy seems to work just fine with V4.2. The system I helped on last night was a disaster because somehow we got every file in [SYS0...] that was not a piece of VMS removed from a directory. Not deleted, mind you, just removed. Fortunately an ANALYZE/DISK/REPAIR put them all (550 or so) in [SYSLOST] and someone got to spend the next 5 hours putting them back... Yuck. We aren't sure WHY this happened, just know that it didn't happen to me this afternoon. I think we had a couple of aborted installations before we got the thing working, and that one of these aborts confused things so much that the subsequent install zapped some directory backlinks that it shouldn't have. Be careful. Anyway, anyone else got any 4.2 experiences to relate? Anyone know of any products (DEC or otherwise) that are broken in V4.2? /Kevin Carosso engvax!kvc @ CIT-VAX.ARPA Hughes Aircraft Co.
zar%Xhmeia@CIT-HAMLET.ARPA (09/08/85)
When I started installing VMS V4.2 I (like a dummy) left DECNET running. It bombed just before trying to shutdown before Phase II and did a "$ @OPA0:" to allow me to shutdown the system manually. I then did something REALLY cute!: "$ EXIT". This exited VMSINSTAL and deleted a lot of neccessary install files after moving some of VMS V4.1 to [SYSF...] (making the system unbootable). I relogged in on OPA0: and backed up the files from the save-set VMS042.A (but forgot/didn't think to restore save-set REQUIRED.) to the correct directory, typed ^P HALT, BOOT and the procedure continued for a little bit longer and crashed when it needed stuff from REQUIRED. After this, I reloaded VMS V4.1 and did it the right way (no DECNET, no logged in users, from OPA0:) and everything worked perfectly. I am also having problems with exponents in the run-time math library. Looks like I may be heading back for VMS V4.1. From The Great Zar