[Info-vax] Kittson question

[Scott Dorsey]

JF Mezei  <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote:
>In cases where the customer wants you to perfectly and completely mimic
>their current VAX down to device names etc, is this not an indication
>that the customer no longer has in-house VMS maintenance expertise and
>prefers to pay you more to mimic the environment so no changes need to
>be made ?

Yes, or even worse he has software that he doesn't understand and cannot
change.  Often this is commercial software for which source was never
available, or locally-written code for which the source has been lost.

>In a situation where someone setting up a new VMS box on that new
>architecture I can't name,  wouldn't that imply an active VMS site with
>in-house expertise who would be able to move their last VAX apps onto
>any emulated instance and change device/disk names if needed ?

Not necessarily.  Could be an outside consultant coming in and doing the
job and working to get out as quickly as possible.

>In other words, when looking at providing emulated VAX-VMS support on
>the new VMS, is it really necessary to be able to mimic every different
>VAX model with every different config ? Wouldn't a generic VAX emulation
>based on one of the last VAX models be more than enough since anyone
>setting it up will have the knowledge to tailor their VAX-VMS apps ?

I don't think so, but it might be nice and it might make life easier for
some customers.  I think this is much more an issue for ELN and Ultrix
users than VMS, but I don't think there are any of those left.
--scott

-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."