Read a Win2k Cd on Alpha OpenVMS v7.3-1

[Victor Mendham]

I saw the posting about OpenVMS on Win2K and was wondering about the other way around.
I have downloaded OpenVMS patches to my Win2K laptop and was thinking of burning them to cd for read on an Alpha.
Anyone done this, does it work?
Is there an issue with the Win2k to OpenVMS conversion of files (normally they need to be transfered in binary format, Windows does some funcky stuff to the files).
If so anyone have a how to?

[Craig A Berry]

First responding to your subject line, you may need to use MOUNT/MEDIA_FORMAT=CDROM when mounting a CD-ROM from the DOS/Windows world on VMS. Type

$ help mount/media_format=cdrom

for more information. If your question is really about CD formats, it is certainly possible to burn VMS format CD-ROMS from VMS systems. Search the archives of the comp.os.vms newsgroup for "CDRECORD" and also check the FAQ at <>.

But the rest of your question is really about file format rather than disk format. The ECOs tend to be self-extracting executables, so they'll need to be treated as fixed-length, 512-byte record files. This is what they would normally be after a binary transfer using http, ftp, etc. Sometimes you can rescue a file that has been transferred but doesn't know its real attributes by resetting those attributes. Type

$ help set file/attributes

for more information.

But if you have a choice I'd recommend skipping the CD-ROM step and simply upload the files to the VMS system from your laptop using ftp or kermit. Better yet, download the files from the hp patches site directly to the VMS system using Mozilla, Lynx, curl, or ftp.