[Info-vax] Changed Boot behavior on XP1000 since 2013

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2013-01-30 09:11:42 +0000, Joukj said:

> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> On 2013-01-29 11:07:50 +0000, Hans Vlems said:
>> 
>>> The next question is : can we fix the error?
>>> Very likely we won't get any support from HP, presumably there are very 
>>> few XP1000's or ALpha Server 1200's (let alone Digital Server 5305's) 
>>> covered by a
>>> hardware maintenance contract.
>> 
>> AlphaStation XP1000 is listed as a supported system for OpenVMS Alpha 
>> V8.4 <http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/spdalphaintegrity84.pdf>, so HP 
>> will either be changing the SPD here, or changing the firmware, or 
>> (likely) changing the OpenVMS Alpha code.
>> 
> Given this listed support as mentoned above, does the following make sense?
>     -I have a software contract with HP
>     -I have NO hardware contract
> Hp has to respond on the problems I see when booting OpenVMS (asking 
> for the date (I noticed that the time is always picked up correct even 
> if if it is not typed)

Since my comments were apparently unclear, your contract status is 
irrelevant to my comments, beyond meaning that you likely won't gain 
access to any fixes at all quickly.

Depending on what HP decides to do here — given this box is currently a 
supported platform — there'll be either a CPU-specific patch[1] and 
that'll probably eventually get rolled into an UPDATE kit, and some of 
those UPDATE kits do eventually seem to arrive in the recent download 
distros for hobbyists, and this presumes that the folks with 
AlphaStation XP1000 boxes can't make a case for early access to the 
CPU-specific patch or potentially the UPDATE.

Or there's the other outcome for this, where HP decides to drop support 
for the box entirely, and all bets are off.

Put another way, if HP patches this, you might be able to gain access 
to this particular fix in a year or three.  Pending that, it's NVRAM 
time...

On a semi-related note, I did suggest to the HP folks that it would be 
reasonable to provide a way to purchase licenses and support on-line.  
It'd be nice if there was a way to easily buy a real yearly OpenVMS 
license and to buy support escalations or specific patches, but I don't 
see that happening.


————
[1] probably some sort of a CPU2208 or CPU220B patch kit.  Some years 
back, there was a VMS721_CPU2208-V0100 patch for this box, for instance.
[2] And can't use the NVRAM deposit workaround that was posted earlier.

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