use wal archiving scheme from 8.1 on 9.0

Hello List

I have a nicely working system of maintaining a cold standby of master
8.1.11 server. System consists of a set of scripts to do a base
backup to standby and scheme to send wal files and restoring the cold
standby should the master server break down

I have another totally separate postgresql server 8.4.4 that stands
alone (without any slave standby server). I wish to upgrade this
8.4.4 server to 9.0.1 and at the same time build a hot standby server
for read-only queries. My question is can I essentially steal the
scripts and schemes from 8.1.11 to set up this 9.0.1 master/slave
system? Then set up a section for hot standby in the slave?

Thanks in advance

mr.wu