Joe after Curtis,
> The MPE license goes with the box, so you have a licensed MPE/iX
> license. Any add-ons would also go with the box (the licenses,
> that is).  This means compilers, etc.

Agreed.

> If I were the type of person to do the nasty thing, I could
> upgrade it to 5.5 - but that's illegal[...]

I'm not sure this is entirely clear.

You have a license to run MPE/iX on the box.  The license does not
indicate any version.

Generally the "support" dollars you pay do *not* pay for new
software versions but only for real support (i.e. calling the
response center), so failing to pay for support doesn't mean
necessarily that there's some thing you didn't pay for that
you should have in order to be entitled to use the newer version
of the software.

A component of the annual dollars you pay to HP is for "update
materials" or something like that.  This generally is not the
license to use the materials but simply the fee for the physical
media that the updates are delivered on.

A complete reading of all the license and support agreements
involved will *probably* turn up something that would prevent you
from borrowing a friend's update tapes for use on your machine (or
at least preventing the friend from loaning you the tapes), but
on the other hand if tomorrow Joe's machine just happened to
be on 5.5, I'm not sure that the fact that it was running 5.5
would be a violation of anything.

G.