> On a philosophical side, what do you guys do, preserve both hardware
> and original software or upgrade the software? On my 3100/M38 I took
> out the original RZ24 with 5.?, put an old IBM disk and installed 7.2.
I find it more gratifying, personally, when my collector machines can do
useful work too. So my VS3100 has a seagate 1.02 gb drive with VMS 7.whatever
and UCX on it, so it can be a useful member of my network. Likewise, my
apple 2 GSs, when assembled, usually have a 40 or 80 meg SCSI drive feeding
software to them. Heck, even my apple 2E has a 40 meg drive out of an old mac.
I tend to think of these machines as representatives of an evolutionary step
in computing in general, so I want them as far along as they got. I want the
machine represented in all its final glory, not the (usually) half equipped
embrionic state it was originally shipped.
The upshot is, if you want the machine to do useful work, go with the latest
and greatest version of VMS. If you want a museum piece that's historically
correct, don't. IMHO they're not all that different, really, although the
guts changed quite a bit. 7.whatever seems to run images I compiled under
VMS 4.5 back in college without a hitch, and to me, the old software is at least
as interesting as the OS.
--
Jim Strickland
jim_at_DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com
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Received on Thu Dec 02 1999 - 02:56:36 GMT