9 Mar
2023
9 Mar
'23
5:04 p.m.
Johnny Billquist <bqt(a)softjar.se> wrote:
1. Find an existing VMS license for VAX and use that.
If you have real hardware then it probably (though not for sure) had a VMS license at
one time. So if you acquire an old VAX somehow, it's important to try to preserve the
existing contents of the system disk. If you can recover the LMF$LICENSE.LDB file then
you can reuse that with a new VMS installation.
Also, if it's a machine from the late 80s then it probably had actual paper PAKs
("Product Authorization Keys"). These were printed on single sheets of fancy
paper in neat little folders. If you acquire an old machine it's worth
checking/asking for those.
As for the legality of this, PAKs are transferrable with the machines, however getting
HP to do this for you today is likely impossible.
Bob