> At 11:45 AM 11/26/01, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> >For those of us DECUS members who have not yet gotten any hobbyist VAX
> >licenses, is it too late? I have one of the recent hobby CDs and a bunch
> >of 6.x originals, so media isn't a real problem, but licenses are.
>
> Its still possible to get licenses if you have a DECUS *number.* The
> original DECUS membership "ids" were a mix of letters (basically parts of
> both your last and first name) and they were later changed to Encompass
> membership numbers. If you have the number then the Montagar page will
> accept it, if you have the old LETTER id then that page will not recognize it.
The original DECUS IDs were numbers, then a couple of years ago they switched
to the mix of letters. They've just recently gone back to numbers.
> >What about a project to hack LMF? There was a lot of controversy a while
> >back about the "Screw LMF" T-Shirt at a Symposium with, IIRC, a 5.2 and
> >5.3 patch (details of exact versions fuzzy). Did DEC decide to lock stuff
> >down after 5.x or is it still possible to simply bypass checks in LMF.EXE
> >to always grant a license?
>
> Well it has been demonstrated on this list that one can "reverse engineer"
> the LMF algorithm and generate your own PAKs. Presumably that is an option,
> although it becomes significantly more onerous than being "legit"
You can patch VMS to always return a valid status for a requested product,
but some products request a bogus license to check if this patch is in
place. If it is, the product will disable itself.
I don't remember any of DEC's/Compaq's products checking for the patch,
but I know of at least two third-party products that perform the check.
--
Eric Dittman
dittman_at_dittman.net
Check out the DEC Enthusiasts Club at http://www.dittman.net/
Received on Mon Nov 26 2001 - 21:03:59 GMT