[Info-vax] 8.4 freespace-drift problem?

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <mjnbp1$k32$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
<seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes: 

> The commercial sites have a budget, too.

Yes, but larger.

> When I get mail on this stuff, I ask the folks whether they have enough 
> of a budget for the hobby.   Can the folks afford to have boards fail, 
> and to repair or replace them?   If not, the folks might want to try a 
> different hobby, or a different approach.  Without a budget for parts 
> and pieces, the hobbyist gets to spend time repairing and soldering 
> boards (and with SMT, that's a hassle),  or a whole lot of frustration, 
> or sometimes both.   

I have more than enough spares so that I can replace anything which 
fails with something configured identically.

At the moment, I have a software problem.

> For now and for hobbyist folks that want real hardware, I'd still 
> recommend scrounging a zx2000 (I've seen those sell for US$200 to 
> US$450) if you can find one, 

Yes, but for a cluster, one would need, say, 3, then at least a couple 
of spares.

> but hopefully VSI gets that x86-64 port 
> going and we then get a better and more appropriate selection of 
> hardware available.   

Indeed.

> Given the lack of patch access for hobbyists, staying current gets more 
> interesting, as you can at least get a recent UPDATE patch 
> AFAICT/AFAIK.   

Right.

> For this case, there have been a number of patches for 
> V7.3-2, and a number of them are mandatory patches and fixes for 
> crashes and related.  These patches for older releases are generally 
> not available to hobbyists, too.

Right.  One reason why I wanted to go to 8.4.  The problem now is that 
7.3-2 (up-to-date on patches at the time the access was cut off; I'm 
certainly not experiencing any problems with it) works and 8.4 with 
UPDATE5 does not.  OK, it might be some configuration problem, but 
normally things don't stop working after an upgrade.

> Donno.  Maybe.   Clean installs and standard file locations and typical 
> configurations are less hassle.  

If one wants to do a clean install, yes.  But my problems are not 
related to this.

> After tracing the startup through 
> with the current environment, one of the next troubleshooting steps 
> would be installing OpenVMS V8.4 on a scratch disk.  Whether that 
> works.  Not clustered.  Not tailored.  Not HBVS across 10 MbE or 100 
> MbE.  Not tuned or tailored beyond what's in the V8.4 documentation.

First I'll boot from the old 7.3-2 disk and make sure it still works.

Note that DECwindows DID run for two months after the upgrade; it was 
only after a reboot that it stopped working.  I re-loaded the last 
working parameters, but the problem is still there.

> Put another way, I'd fully expect to have troubles, hassles, failures 
> and weirdnesses with the configuration that Phillip is running.

Actually, I have never had any problems with my hardware configuration.
Sure, 100 MB is not the fastest, but it is fast enough.  With
/POLICY=MINICOPY, I rarely need a full copy, and when I do still much 
faster with 100 MB and Ultra-wide SCSI as with 10 MB and narrow SCSI-1. 

> I'd probably also move the local DNS services and other 
> core services to small x86 or ARM box; a plug computer, micro server or 
> something of that ilk.   

I have stuff on the LAN in TCPIP$HOSTS.DAT.  Other DNS stuff is done by 
the DSL router (which can forward requests to the outside world).  My 
own DNS (for the outside world coming to me) is also handled externally.