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From: ta2@edison.ge.com (tom allebrandi)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: ?? on VMS releases for uVAX-II
Message-ID: <8701230427.AA18891@edison.GE.COM>
Date: Thu, 22-Jan-87 23:27:31 EST
Article-I.D.: edison.8701230427.AA18891
Posted: Thu Jan 22 23:27:31 1987
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I have a few questions about VMS releases for the MicroVaxen. My salesman's
answer to these questions was no answer at all. (He could not/did not want to
find out)

1) I have been told (by the DEC distributor that sold us the system) that
   4.5 for the MicroVAX is somewhere in the software production pipe.
   Is this true? If so, when can I expect it?

2) The same source indicates that 4.5 for the MicroVAX is the (long) rumored
   VMS that is not different from the big system VMS. (IE the end of the
   two (subtlely/annoyingly) different VMSen.) Is this true?

   I thought that 4.5 was for the new CPU's and primarily for Low End
   Clusters. I had understood that the death of MicroVMS would occur at
   4.6 at the earliest.

3) When (if) DEC decides that us MicroVAX folks get upgraded to real VMS,
   are they also going to upgrade us to a real manual set?

So far, I have found the following to be the only differences between
real VMS and MicroVMS. Have I missed anything important?

	1) SYS$EXAMPLES is empty. (Unless you have C)
	2) No object librarys for VAX-C; you have to use the sharable
		runtimes.
	3) A lot of the HELP library is missing. Specifically, I have
		found RTL (help on the LIB$, STR$ etc calls) missing,
		SYSTEM_SERVICES (help on the SYS$calls) missing,
		ANALYZE/DISK (and most of the other ANALYZE) missing,
		and a few others. 
	4) MicroVMS is distributed with SYSALF setup in the belief that
		MicroVAXen are used as turnkey application systems.

Most of this hasn't bothered us at all; we've been quite pleased that for
the most part we can't really tell that we don't have full VMS there.

Thanks in advance for any light anyone can shed on my questions!
Tom Allebrandi
ta2@edison.ge.com