At 12:47 PM 1/22/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>hmmmmm.
>
>it never occured to me to try and boot off of the HDD to see if there was
>anything there i was so gung-ho about getting NetBSD on the thing. :)

Silly you. :-)

    VAX/VMS Version V5.5-2   Major version id = 1 Minor version id = 0

>Please enter date and time (DD-MMM-YYYY HH:MM):
>
>but no matter what i try to enter, i always get this error:
>
>invalid date/time

Well you must enter it as it asks (although you can leave off the time and 
it will default to 00:00 (ie midnight) try 22-JAN-2001 and see what it 
says. Note you must have all four digits of the year, the month must be 
spelled out, and you may need leading zeros for the day (not sure about that)

>ANYWAY, i would love to be able to fart around with VMS for a while, so if
>anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

Several:
         1) See the VMS FAQ for how to "break in" since you don't have the 
system
            password.

         2) Use 'LICENSE LIST' to see what licenses you have

         3) Use LICENSE ISSUE to save the non-expiring licenses to a file 
so that
            you can re-install them later when you put fresh installs on 
the disk.

         4) Sign up for DECUS (see www.decus.org) so that you can get a 
license for
           all the unbundled products and then you can fart around with 
COBOL :-)

         5) Get a half dozen terminals and amaze your friends with the 
"data center"
            in your room :-)

--Chuck
PS use HELP LICENSE to figure out all the options but basically you can 
re-create the PAKs (license kits) that were originally used to install the 
machine. While you can get new PAKs from DECUS, they typically only last 
for 1 year whereas DEC generally issued lifetime VMS and VMS-SUP (aka 
networking) PAKs with all of their systems.