Seeking ancient AXP firmware etc

[David Brenkus]

Dear VMS gurus,

I am an OpenVMS enthusiast with a couple problems that I am looking for help on, primarily in locating software resources. I have a DEC 3000 with OpenVMS 1.5 1H1 installed and licensed. First of all, I don’t have any of the original media for this system, and I am wondering if it is possible to download or purchase cds of this older OS version. (I’m not even sure if it originally was released on cd, or only was on tape since it is that old.) I would, however, prefer to upgrade the operating system to a newer version, since 1.5 1H1 has some annoying quirks (such as difficulties recognizing some scsi drives), but unfortunately I need to run software that was written for it, namely an old Kodak product that drove their LVT Digital Film Recorder, one of which I also have. The LVT software will actually work on newer versions of VMS, but the driver for the printer card (DCT-1000 by the Logical Co.) will not, since with version OpenVMS 6.1, a different driver architecture was introduced (“Step 2”). I have been told by a former employee of LVT that the driver (JXDRIVER.EXE) was provided by Digital and I believe that it should be possible to fix it to run under the newer architecture, if I can locate the source code. I also understand that DEC distributed the source code for some of their products, though I have been unable to find a listing to see if the JXDRIVER was a part of it. So, the second thing I am looking for is the source code to the JXDRIVER.EXE driver, if anyone has it or knows where I can find it. Finally, (and most importantly) I am looking for the old firmware that went with my version of the DEC 3000, (5.1?). I foolishly made the mistake of upgrading the firmware to the latest version (7.0) and now 1.5-1H1 refuses to run! I would like to downgrade the firmware so that I can once again run the LVT software, but have been unable to locate any older firmware versions. Although the HP website has many resources available for download, they only have the latest firmware, and materials and patches from OpenVMS 6.2 and up. If you know where I can find any of these older materials, I would greatly appreciate a pointer!

Yours,
David Brenkus
(ziegmont@yaho

[Antoniov.]

David,
welcome to vms forum.
Alpha firmware download are avaiabile here http://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/Alpha/firmware/ but I'm afraid your system is not included in download list.
However you can contact HP for firmware cd.

Antonio Vigliotti

[Antoniov.]

David,
I saw my firmware update cd-rom and found dec 3000 firmware V7.
I guess you could download the full CD from http://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/Alpha/firmware/readme.html if you choice download zipped.iso.image (over 200 Mb) but I never done it.

Good Luck!
Antonio Vigliotti

[Jan van den Ende]

David,

I do not know if this still appplies to HP, but I remember the San Diego Decus (in the Compaq era).

At that time there was a big hussle over Micro$oft declaring in court that they could not supply the one-but last version of their OS, and "of course could also not be expected to"

This led to a discussion, during the Engeneering Panel session IIRC, and I remember their statement then:
EVERY version, sub-version, and patch, from V3.0 onward, is "available online".
Versions before that are available as multiple copies in archives.

... and I know San Diego was 5.5 years back, and Compac went into HP, but.. worth a try, I guess?

hth.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Ian Miller.]

Do you have the DEC3000-M300, M400 or M500?
I have various versions of software V3.x and V5.1 for all three and can place one of them on a web site for you to access.

[David Brenkus]

A further clarification on the firmware: I have a Dec 3000/600 which uses the m400 firmware. It's easy to get confused about the firmware numbering. The firmware that I need is from 1994, and will show up in the boot up messages as "v5.1". I do have one firmware cd ("Alpha Systems Firmware Update V5.0") but that cd only has V7.0 and 6.9 for the Dec3000/400. If you have the M400 V5.1 firmware, that should be the one I need. Thanks to you all for replying!

[Ian Miller. · Accepted solution]

http://www.encompasserve.org/~miller/dec3000_m400_v5_1.zip

let me know when you have it so I can delete it. It came from the Alpha firmware V2.9 CD (I always knew it was a good idea never to throw anyway anything :-)

[David Brenkus]

Ian -- You, you, you! Thank you very much for saving that old firmware cd and letting me dl it -- it really saved my patootie! It got me back to where I was before I fried my system with the firmware update. I wouldn't mind getting a copy of the whole firmware cd, to have as a backup. If you can think of an easy way to do this please email me. By the way, why couldn't DEC have simply allowed users to save the old firmware to a file in their utility? Also, if anyone has any leads on my other two questions, I would greatly appreciate any response. Thanks again!