recent acquisitions for the House of VAX - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

10 Sep 2001

...
   Of course a PAK generator solves the problem of missing
PAKs   quite nicely.
 Yes it does, however I am dearly afraid that with HP and
 Compaq doing the
 dance that the lore of such things will be permanently lost
 at some point.  
 AFAIK, the PAKGEN program that third parties
 were allowed to purchase would only
 generate PAKs in the name of that
 third party. So simply having PAKGEN
 would not allow you to generate DEC PAKs! 
True, and PAKGEN was only available to run on a VAX, not an
Alpha, so you had to keep a VAX around.
...
  OTOH several people reverse-engineered
 the PAK checksum and at least one
 company were selling a PAKGEN-like service
 until they were "leaned on". 
Reverse engineering is what most people did.  I know of one
company still selling a PAK generator, but like PAKGEN it
only lets you generate PAKs for your own products.
Was the company that was stopped selling a PAK generator or
were they selling generated PAKs?  If they were selling a
PAK generator I don't see how they could be stopped.
--
Eric Dittman
dittman(a)dittman.net
Check out the DEC Ethusiasts Club at http://www.dittman.net/