[SirLinksalot]

Of interest only for you techies out there ...

I don't use VMS anymore ( I do UNIX and LINUX nowadays ). But I cannot help but feel nostalgic for this venerable Operating System which is reliable, easy to use and program, highly scalable, and virtually unhackable ( and which apparently, is not dead yet ).

[Revolting cat!]

The best OS ever, with the best set of tools, editors, and a shell scripting language DCL, capable of direct calls to the OS (i.e. the lexical functions.) Try that with EUNUCHS! I once programmed my own editor with VAXTPU. Piece'a cake. Clustering? Early 1980s, now being "discovered" in the world of EUNUCHS. I miss VMS every day as I pull my hair trying to get anything useful out of Solaris, shell, and the horrible Perl language.

[TChris]

And as for the hardware miracles of the Alpha architecture, you can find some of its magic in AMD's Opteron processors. They inherited much of the insanely fast bus architecture and 64-bit goodness of the Alpha.

[VOA]

bump

[Physicist]

Yep, I was a longtime VAX/VMS bigot. VAX Fortran was the lingua franca of high energy physics. I can't remember a blessed thing about the dear old EDT editor or the debugger, but I'll bet my fingers do.

If you have an old VAX or Alpha--or buy one on EBay--you can get a VMS hobbyist license for free. If I were looking for another time sink, that's what I'd do.

[Revolting cat!]

The NT project was headed by one of the main VMS engineers, whom Microsoft had lured from Digital. Unfortunately, and we are paying the price to this day, it seemed to have been a rushed project, as it missed some of the key advantages of VMS like the multi-version file system, batching facility, DCL shell, and so on.

Multi-version file system in 1978? Try that on EUNUCHS in 2005! You can pay a fortune for something called ClearCase, which has a specific purpose (code version control) and still misses some of the features of RMS. Some years ago, before I knew anything about ClearCase or similare systems I wrote a code version control program using DCL, several thousand lines of it, logical names, ACLs and other things. It was primitive but it did the job.

[George Smiley]

Link to pro-VMS rant I posted in the WMF thread recently.

And pessimest, I hate to contradict you BUT:

New applications ARE being ported to VMS on Itanium.

[George Smiley]

Then you'll wax nostalgic about OpenVMS at 20 (pdf).

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

My company still supports and writes Client software for Open/VMS systems. Many are still in use at the enterprise level.

[JMJJR]

PDP 11/3 -> Vax Assy over alot of years. Still have my PDP-11/20 Processor handbook (the PDP bible).

Same command set (other than move/load)as the MC68K.

That was a looong time ago !!

[Final Authority]

I got out of college when the big four were in a hiring frenzy. If you could talk and walk and use English as a first language you could have a job at Wang or DEC (if you knew someone) and you didn't need a skill. DEC had a open campus in most of their plants and workers were arranged in teams where they could set their own schedules, after all, they were building machines and selling them as fast as they could build them at astronomical prices and profits as well. It didn't take too long for the workers to get over on the management.

When DEC built a campus for software in Merrimack, NH it was a marvel in the industry. It was like a country club and the casual corporate approach in dress and management began there.

When things began to go badly for Wang and then DEC and folks were fired, former high-tech workers would be dumbfounded that no one thought they were skilled enough to get a job back in high-tech. Employers who needed workers knew they were basically unqualified and spoiled by the former culture from where they used to work. It was common back in the days of DEC and Wang for a buyer to sign out on Monday saying that they were calling on vendors to be out for a week or more on vacation. (no cell phones and nearly no office email, except at DEC) Life was good, but I just had to work for a high-tech defense contractor instead, but then again, I was qualified.

[SirLinksalot]

Folks,

I'm sure the majority of your applications that run on OpenVMS are based on the Alpha architecture. If this article tells us anything, it is this -- HP is NO LONGER GOING TO SUPPORT THE ALPHA PLATFORM in a few years.

For those with applications that run on the VMS thinking about their future, it looks like we have about 5 to 6 years to rethink if we want to run on an ITANIUM based VMS platform...( what HP calls the INTEGRITY PLATOFORM) or maybe to upgrade ( I don't think it is the right word, so lets use the word -- MOVE ) to a different Operating System platform altogether ??

Hard choices. Also hard to determine how much longer VMS will live ....I don't know if there are any new installations out there at all.

[MikeD]

I have fond memories of VAX/VMS systems. We had a campus VAX in high school in 1991, where I sent my first email, read my first bulletin board message, and downloaded my first guitar tab from the OLGA. I was so proud when I figured out how to change my default prompt...

In fact, I did a good chunk of the analysis of my dissertation research, including most of the plots, on a VMS (DEC/Alpha 400 MHz), and I graduated in 2002. Granted, I was the only one in the department (besides my advisor) using a VMS, but that just goes to show there are a few users out there.

[commish]

We did all the data processing for the SR-71 Blackbird on a VAX 8350 at Beale in the 1980's. I was a Mission porgrammer writing Fortran 77.

When we got the VAX in 87 we thought it was a godsend, up to that point we had been working on a SEL 32/55 and were still using MYLAR Tape to input the mission data into the SR-71.

[VadeRetro]

Used it for a long time and loved it. You don't see it in the want ads anymore.

[Revolting cat!]

Another revolutionary VMS feature, besides the multiversion file system, that makes EUNUCHS look like a toy OS, are the status return codes from all OS subsystems, and, ideally, from your own programs as well. Whereas EUNUCHS programs typically return status 1 or 0, which makes debugging hell, VMS systems return unique hex numbers for each unique condition. Well, duh, you UNIX "gurus"!

Due to this and other factors, a UNIX programmer is, in my estimate, about a third as productive as a VMS programmer. For scripting, I'll take DCL over Perl and its derivatives any day.

[Ciexyz]

I used a WANG computer at work in the early to late 80's, and still regret its demise.

[zeugma]

bookmark bump