[Info-vax] Looking for VAX/VMS V1.0 and V2.x kits

[cornelius at eisner.decus.org]

Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-earth.ufp> wrote:
> On 2018-08-14, cornelius at eisner.decus.org <cornelius at eisner.decus.org> wrote:

>> There's a chance that I have a system disk backup on RA60
>> from that era.  Ignoring the issue of finding a drive that can
>> read it, might it be possible to a kit from that? I have forgotten.
 
> I don't know if it's possible to build a kit from that, but that
> is only a means to the end goal which is a running VMS 2.x system.

On Eisner there's sys$update:spkitbld.com, which is likely what
I was trying to remember.

Otherwise, however, the likelihood of making it all come
together is quite small, beginning with the fact that by the
time the hardware in question (a 750 and 780) was retired, it
was probably at 4.x or later.  Since the removable packs in
question were a scarce resource, the ones that were left on the
shelf for many years afterward, up until someone asked me what
to do with them, would likely have been newer backups.

Secondly, the reason they never left the organization was that there
is likely at least a small amount of sensitive information present
and no one would ever have been able to justify paying a recovery
service to extract the data to other media for further examination
and possible archiving.

But I will check - I believe the packs are in a coworker's possession -
and see if I can determine what their contents are.  All I remember
seeing were small handwritten labels, one per pack, with the
operator's initials, date, and type of backup, so it would be a
guess as to VMS version anyway.

[...]

> I have good coverage of running VMS versions all the way back to 3.x
> and I have the VMS 1.5 kit which I am going to set up, but there's
> a big jump from 3.x back to 1.5 so it would be nice to get an
> intermediate version (as well as 1.0 itself if it still exists).
> 
> BTW, was Macro-32 always supplied with the VMS distribution starting
> from V1.0 or was it an optional kit until a later VMS version ?

I believe it was present in V2.   It was likely there in V1 as
well, since I do not remember it ever having been mentioned as
a layered product.

George