To introduce myself I am Nick, I live in Melbourne, Australia, I am a keen collector of DEC. I'm not a VMS expert, I have mainly been running other OSs. But I hope to get to VMS eventually when I have time.
I am writing here because a friend has inherited an enormous collection of DEC, he has pretty solid plans how to distribute it all to good homes and what should be preserved and what can be scrapped. But it is an enormous project as he has 20~30 years worth of systems big and small, hundreds of TTYs, monitors, etc...
So one of the vexing issues he has is documentation, there are hundreds of boxes of complete manual sets for all versions of VMS (he mentioned 3.0, 3.1, and, 5.0 as far as I can recall). These are probably going to be got rid of. I would consider scanning them for hobbyists to use, but before embarking on such a project...
(1) Is the complete documentation history already available from HP, obviously if they have original PDFs and not scanned PDFs and they are accessible to hobbyists then there is no need for me to scan anything.
(2) Would HP be willing to license these materials to be put onto Bitsavers, apparently, my friend has contacted Al Kossow (Bitsavers founder) and he has said he is not allowed to put VMS documentaiton up.
(3) Would anyone like to have the original manuals shipped to them, I can't say definitely but I imagine my friend would be willing to do it for the shipping cost plus perhaps a nominal fee to cover the cost of his time.
(4) How about original installation materials, I haven't checked but we probably have enormous quantities of original tapes and CDs and so on with VMS on them. Is anyone willing to pay shipping plus nominal costs? I could try to read these and put them online, but I suspect this would be a bridge too far for HP to endorse.
malmberg August 04 2022 No more VAX hobbyist licenses. Community licenses for Alpha/IA64/X86_64 VMS Software Inc. Commercial VMS software licenses for VAX available from HPE.
ozboomer July 20 2022 Just re-visiting.. No more hobbyist licenses? Is that from vmssoftware.com, no 'community' licenses?
valdirfranco July 01 2022 No more hobbyist license...sad
mister_wavey February 12 2022 I recall that the disks failed on the public access VMS systems that included Fafner
parwezw January 03 2022 Anyone know what happened to FAFNER.DYNDS.ORG? I had a hobbyist account here but can longer access the site.
gtackett October 27 2021 Make that DECdfs _2.1A_ for Vax
gtackett October 27 2021 I'm looking for DECdfs V2.4A kit for VAX. Asking here just in case anyone is still listening.
MarkRLV September 17 2021 At one time, didn't this web site have a job board? I would love to use my legacy skills one last time in my career.
malmberg January 18 2021 New Hobbyist PAKs for VAX/VMS are no longer available according to reports. Only commercial licenses are reported to be for sale from HPE
dfilip January 16 2021 Can someone please point me to hobbyist license pak? I'm looking for VAX/VMS 7.1, DECnet Phase IV, and UCX/TCPIP ... have the 7.1 media, need the license paks ... thanks!
