Miami Computing & Information Services (MCIS) is pleased to announce
that on Tuesday, August 22, 1995, MCIS Technical Support will be adding a
new Alpha system to the MiaVX1 OpenVMS cluster in Oxford.  While most
operations will be unchanged, there are a few changes and new features that
users should be aware of.  These changes include:
 
1) OpenVMS 6.2
 
   The new Alpha system will be running OpenVMS 6.2 (the current system is
   running OpenVMS 6.1).  The new user features of this OS are:
     a) Command Path - currently, when a user issues a command, the system
        searches all symbols on the system and then searches for a command
        by that name.  If both of these fail, an error is returned to the
        user.  Under OpenVMS 6.2, the system will also search the
        directories pointed to by the logical DCL$PATH for a .COM or .EXE
        file with the same name as the command.  If it finds one, it will
        run it.  Currently, the DCL$PATH logical points to your login
        directory and to your current directory.  This should make it much
        easier to run programs that users write and to specify parameters
        to those programs.
     b) OLDMAIL - the OLDMAIL command no longer requires the use of in%""
        when sending Internet or BITNET style addresses.  Use of the in%""
        should continue to work, though.
     c) new /BEFORE and /SINCE options - many OpenVMS commands have a
        /BEFORE or /SINCE qualifier.  These commands can now take advantage
        of 2 new options - BOOT and LOGIN.  The BOOT option will select
        all files before or since the last system boot.  The LOGIN option
        will select all files before or since the last login of this
        account.  For example, DIR/SINCE=LOGIN will list all files
        created in this login session.
     d) /KEY qualifier for SEARCH command - the /KEY qualifier can be used
        to search for text within a file in certain columns.  For more
        information issue the HELP SEARCH/KEY command at the $ prompt on
        the new system.
 
2) ACQUIRE
 
   Acquire now accepts it's disk space size in MB rather than blocks.
   For example, ACQUIRE 5 will acquire 5MB of temporary space.  Specifying
   disk space in blocks will continue to work for backward compatibility
   but will print an message reminding you to begin using MB rather than
   blocks.  This support will be removed in the future.
 
3) SAS
 
   SAS will now acquire temporary scratch space before running.  This
   should help users with limited disk space who need to execute SAS.
 
4) Programming Languages
 
   New versions of several programming languages are included on the new
   system.  The significant changes to these are listed below:
   C       - support for 64 bit integer constants; compiler and run-time
             performance improvements.  For more information, see the
             file SYS$HELP:CC050.RELEASE_NOTES on the new system.
   C++     - XPG4 support; compiler and run-time performance improvements.
             For more information, see the file SYS$HELP:CXX050.RELEASE_NOTES
             on the new system.
   Fortran - signed parameters in DATA statements; automatic arrays (where
             arrays local to routines are dimensioned by variables that are
             arguments to the routine); new SELECT CASE construct; new CYCLE
             statment (interrupts the current execution cycle of the
             innermost or named DO construct); performance improvements.  For
             more information, see the file SYS$HELP:DEC_FORT063.RELEASE_NOTES
             on the new system.
   COBOL   - compiler performance improvements.  For more information, see
             the file SYS$HELP:COBOL022.RELEASE_NOTES on the new system.
   Pascal  - performance improvements; other minor improvements.  For more
             information, see the file SYS$HELP:PASCAL053.RELEASE_NOTES on
             the new system.
   BASIC   - see the file SYS$HELP:BASIC011.RELEASE_NOTES on the new system.
   ADA     - see the file SYS$HELP:ADA032.RELEASE_NOTES on the new system.
 
5) GCG
 
   GCG has been upgraded to Version 8.0.  This version fixes a problem with
   data added to the database after August of 1994.
 
If you wish to try the new system before Tuesday, log onto the current MiaVX1
system and issue the command SET HOST SEA at the $ prompt.
 
If you have any questions concerning these changes, please contact the MCIS
Help Desk by electronic mail at [log in to unmask] or by telephone at
529-7900.
 
                                       [Kent Covert, MCIS Technical Support]
 
--
                                John B Harlan
             Campus Wide Information Systems (CWIS) Coordinator
                              Miami University
                 137 Hoyt Hall  Oxford, Ohio 45056-1618  USA
                      http://WWW.MUOhio.Edu/~HarlanJB/
        (513) 529-5330     (513) 529-1496 fax     [log in to unmask]