Yesterday, I received my OpenVMS Alpha 8.3 Hobbyist CD in the mail and installed the Stromasys PersonalAlpha product on a Windows XP laptop, followed by my Hobbyist OpenVMS stuff. Everything went fairly well and I am up and running nicely.
Before I ask a question on this forum I would first like to express my thanks to those involved in doing all the work on the Hobbyist program. You do a fantastic job and these efforts are very much appreciated by those of us (like me) who benefit.
PersonalAlpha with OpenVMS is accessed using a telnet client, and I am only able to use a single login session on the laptop. Does anyone know if I am correct in assuming this limitation is due to the OpenVMS hobbyist license being restricted to a single login session ?
I am not exactly sure of what limitations are imposed by the Hobbyist license which is the reason for my question.
Thanks
John Cookson (Canada)
Author
RE: Using Alpha Hobbyist License with personalalpha
I had already loaded the two license PAK's you refer to and when I type
SET LOGINS, I get the following feedback
%SET-I-INTSET, login interactive limit = 64, current interactive value = 1
This surprises me as I would have guessed the Hobbyist distribution would severely limit the number of interactive user logins to avoid the possibility of it being used for commercial purposes.
It may be that the Stromasys personalalpha product is imposing this limit in some way. On personalalpha the Telnet client is setup to connect using the localhost IP address 127.0.0.1 using port 123.
This may have something to do with why I cannot open more than a single telnet connection on the laptop.
Unfortunately, the Stromasys personalalpha forum has been closed (temporarily) since July 2008 owing to spam related problems which makes it difficult to get feedback from other personalalpha users at the present time.
Once again, thank you Stephen, your comments are both helpful and informative
This is just to let you know that I have now resolved the
problem of being able to login to personalalpha using multiple
telnet sessions (previously I was only able to login using the
single console boot telnet session).
The key is to Telnet in from a different computer than the one
used to host personalalpha. Of course both windows PC's must be
on the same local area network.
I am not sure about the reason for not being able to login
using Telnet directly on the host machine as I have found it does
work sometimes (But very rarely). I suspect there is a contention
problem with sharing the host system network adaptor.
I also discovered some other good news about personalalpha
which concerns its use on a windows box running the ESET NOD32
antivirus product. There no longer appears to be a problem
with this combination.
Initially I had been disappointed to read that SRI has stated that
personalalpha is not compatible with NOD32, particularly as NOD32
is the best Antivirus/Antispyware product that I have ever used.
Naturally, I had uninstalled NOD32 before using personalalpha
as I was aware of this problem upfront.
I later came across (through google) an old forum posting from one
of the SRI technical staff, stating that NOD32 may work with
personalalpha in the future as he expected that ESET would move
away from using LSP (Layered Service Provider) mechanisms in
their product. Anyway, I ran LSPfix on one of my PC's running NOD32
and there was no LSP detected for NOD32. Upon seeing this, I
reinstalled NOD32 on the box running personalalpha and have
seen no ill effects as a result.
So far, I am very impressed with personalalpha. Running it on
a 3ghz core 2 system with a 7200rpm SATA hard drive, it has very
good performance and is much faster than something like a
MicroVax 3900.
malmberg August 04 2022 No more VAX hobbyist licenses. Community licenses for Alpha/IA64/X86_64 VMS Software Inc. Commercial VMS software licenses for VAX available from HPE.
ozboomer July 20 2022 Just re-visiting.. No more hobbyist licenses? Is that from vmssoftware.com, no 'community' licenses?
valdirfranco July 01 2022 No more hobbyist license...sad
mister_wavey February 12 2022 I recall that the disks failed on the public access VMS systems that included Fafner
parwezw January 03 2022 Anyone know what happened to FAFNER.DYNDS.ORG? I had a hobbyist account here but can longer access the site.
gtackett October 27 2021 Make that DECdfs _2.1A_ for Vax
gtackett October 27 2021 I'm looking for DECdfs V2.4A kit for VAX. Asking here just in case anyone is still listening.
MarkRLV September 17 2021 At one time, didn't this web site have a job board? I would love to use my legacy skills one last time in my career.
malmberg January 18 2021 New Hobbyist PAKs for VAX/VMS are no longer available according to reports. Only commercial licenses are reported to be for sale from HPE
dfilip January 16 2021 Can someone please point me to hobbyist license pak? I'm looking for VAX/VMS 7.1, DECnet Phase IV, and UCX/TCPIP ... have the 7.1 media, need the license paks ... thanks!
