Introduction
--------------------

Guys and gals, time for a new release dedicated to DEC technologies! 
From now, you have best PDP-11 family hardware simulator on the planet. Entry level QBUS and top level UNIBUS minis with DEC Professional workstation are supported. SDK to implement most weird custom hardware is present. Very special and rare piece of software. I was hunting for it for many years. And finally, thanks to our brother Core Share, to monk who put his professional life on altar of the OpenVMS, we can fill our lives with the light of exploration of DEC software marvels. Glorify Charon-11! 

 Pre-install notes
--------------------

1. This is a "CHARON-11 v2.5 Build 117" distribution with no differences to original distributive.

2. All installation actions require administrative privileges. 

3. Installation was tested on Windows XP Pro SP3 32bit. Zero attempts were made to test it on the other platforms. 

4. Charon-11 is protected by Hardlock dongle. It's a device looking like a USB flash drive and should be connected to USB port to allow Charon-11 to be installed and used. Every dongle have unique properties specific to protected software product which are defined by dongle model and by software developer. To defeat this protection a dongle emulator technology is used. Dongle emulator consists of two parts: 
	a) Dongle emulator software - generic USB dongle hardware emulator.
	b) Dongle dump - description of dongle properties needed by dongle emulator to emulate specific dongle. It is nothing more than .reg file which you need to double click on to install.

5. Charon-11 dongle dump is a sole file: charon11.reg. 
Note: If you are using Charon-Vax (search for Charon-VAX_3.4b109_full_cracked_by_Butcher.rar): Charon-11 dongle have different hardware address than Charon-Vax dongle, so they can happily be emulated at the same time.

6. Charon-11 has one limitation: only single Charon-11 instance can be run on one host. This limitation is burned into executable by evil developers and has no relation to dongle protection. If you will find this annoying - copy single_instance_fix\charon11.exe over original file to fix it. 

7. If you will found some Charon-11 limitations you need to remove - drop me a line.

8. I am searching for oldie VMS/OpenVMS distributives, licenses and other VAX related ware. If you can share something - please drop me a line. 

 Installation
--------------------

1. Install dongle drivers (if you have installed dongle drivers earlier from Charon-Vax distributive, you can pass this step):
	a) Run "hardlock_driver_3.60\hldinst.exe -install".

2. Install dongle emulator (if you have installed dongle emulator earlier from Charon-Vax distributive, you can pass this step):
	a) Run install.bat from dongle_emulator directory.

3. Install dongle dump:
	a) Apply charon11.reg file from dongle_dumps directory to registry.

4. Reboot.

5. Follow the installation manual to install Charon 11 (charon11\Install\CHARON-11.v2.5.Build.117.PDP-11.Install.exe).

 Post-install notes
--------------------
	
1. If dongle driver installation failed with an error "Failed to query processes accessing the driver" - remove registry key "Disable Performance Counters" under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib" branch, reboot and retry.

 Thanks
--------------------

Deep bow to our brother Core Share. And special thanks to our friends Gamebit0 for his perfect dongle emulator and to SaPu for his useful software.

Enjoy!

--
In VMS we trust! 
Butcher - bofhmail@yahoo.com
Dedicated to pink panther

============================================================================
"THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
<bofhmail@gmail.com> wrote this file.  As long as you retain this notice you
can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. Butcher.