Two weeks ago I bought an E4406A from KJDS as a companion to my E4433D. Since it only came with the GSM-Edge option I sniffed around a bit to see what was possible, since I wanted the wcdma enabled. So I did what I normally do, download a firmware upgrade to get an easy access to the system files. Well, in this case it is an interesting upgrade because it comes with a java installer to update the VSA via the lan. Peeking around a bit told me that most of the stuff is done via FTP and of course in there was the user/pass for that and the location of the license files. To my surprise on my VSA there were not only the standard license files which come in the form of OPT.lic (like 202.lic) but also some other files:
202.lic
252.lic
B78.lic
BAC.lic
BAE.lic
nfstmp.3bd8829400000001
nfstmp.3bd8829400000002
nfstmp.3bd8829400000003
nfstmp.3bd8829400000004
nfstmp.3bd8829400000005
nfstmp.3bd8829400000006
nfstmp.3bdeb64f00000001
nfstmp.3bdeb64f00000002
nfstmp.3bdeb64f00000003
nfstmp.3bdeb64f00000004
nfstmp.3bdeb64f00000005
nfstmp.3bdeb64f00000006
nfstmp.3c029a2400000001
nfstmp.3c029a2400000002
nfstmp.3c029a2400000003
nfstmp.3c029a2400000004
nfstmp.3c029a2400000005
TEMPLATE.lic
I know these license files, They are used by FlexLM which you see in a lot of Agilent products from that time. They are all like this:
FEATURE 202 TMOMID01 1.0 permanent uncounted 0123456789AB \
HOSTID=VSA_HOSTID=E1234567
Where HOSTID is the ID of the instrument and the 0123456789AB is the generated key. So what are these nfstmp files? It turnes out that this VSA for some strange reason has a few license files for three different host id's, and luckily one of the id's is the same as my machine. So all I have to do is to copy the nfstmp file with the correct host id and the wcdma option (BAF) to BAF.lic right? Almost... The VSA has only the option code for the installed options, so while I now have the correct license for wcdma the code is still missing. No panic! Just download the correct firmware update, unpack and transfer the (in this case) orion.wcdmart.0 to the VSA. Done!
Of course YMMV but if you are into some fun have a look in your VSA. FTP to it, use vsa/service as user/pass and do an ls-l licenses, who knows you are as lucky as I was