[Info-vax] OpenVMS Hobbyist licence - howto

[Michael Kraemer]

Steven Schweda schrieb:

>    As a little FAQ reading should reveal, the problem is not
> with the OS, it's with the firmware using short-form SCSI
> commands, which wrap at 1GB.  (Some older VMS versions have an
> OS limit at 8GB.  I recall no 4GB limit anywhere.)  Using VMS,
> as I recall, the troublesome firmware goes into action during
> a crash dump.  I don't know if Ultrix had the same problem,
> but I'd assume so.  So, everything will work fine with a
> larger disk, until something goes wrong.  And then, if the
> crash dump region on the disk is not within the first 1GB,
> then you can expect something in the first 1GB to get dumped
> onto.

This doesn't seem to be the complete explanation.
As the other poster has pointed out,
the problem already occurs at boot/installation time,
not just during a crash dump. I did not observe
a similar problem when installing Ultrix 4.5.
And I did not manage to crash my Ultrix/VAX systems yet.
Moreover, IIRC Ultrix lets you allocate the crash dump area
wherever you like, and if this is within the first 1GB,
one should be on the safe side, no?