VMS V5.3-1 SPD

[Chris Scheers]

In general, V5.3-1 should support the same disk sizes as V5.5-2.

The one type of drive to be careful about is SCSI drives.

V5.3 DKDRIVER uses short SCSI commands, so it only works correctly with drives up to 1GB in size. (This is the same restriction as the VAXstation 3100 console, and is for the same reason.)

If you use a drive larger than 1GB with short SCSI commands, VMS does not generate an error, but will silently corrupt the drive with any attempt to write data above the 1GB mark.

In V5.3-2, DKDRIVER uses long SCSI commands and can support large drives.

I don't remember for sure if the long drive support is in V5.3-1. If not, there may (or may not) be a V5.3-1 ECO that fixes this.

If you are not using SCSI drives, this should not be a problem.

[GSnider]

Thank you all,

FYI
I did find out that the Min VMS Version for a VAX 62x0 is V5.0 and VAX 63x0 is V5.1.

Also I do not plan to use SCSI disk drives for this system and/or emulator, so using disk drives that are under the 16777216 block size should work.

Thanks,

GSnider