upgrading cvs and merging branches

[Donald Skidmore]

I have two questions:
I created a branch  using: cvs tag -b -r  v1.2 v1.2-patches myfile.c
I then did  cvs up -r v1.2-patches myfile.c
I modified the file and did a commit
I then did a cvs up -j v1.2-patches and it should the file was merged.
followed by a cvs up -A and finally a cvs up -r v1.2 myfile.c
myfile.c had the original code and not the modifications I made to the 
patch tag why?

My second question:
We have a very old version 1.11.1p1 running on a solaris box. My 
question is what precautions and gotchas do I have to worry about 
migrating to the latest version which  I believe is 1.11.18.

Thanks