I started working with VMS in late-1979, early-1980, in college. I've worked with it professionally since 1986.
I started off my professional VMS life as a technical support guy and software developer for Executive Software; makers of Diskeeper, IOExpress, and some other lesser knowns. Learned a lot about internals and data structures and also wrote a bunch of in-house software to track customers and support issues.
Next was Software Perspectives. That was a small shop that developed VMS system software for other companies to sell.
When they closed shop I moved on to Symark Software. Symark had about a dozen VMS system management products that I was either the principal software developer, updater, or support tech.
Next was Barra, a financial software company. I ran their stock market matching systems for the better part of seven years with no application downtime.
Now I'm semi-retired. Semi, because if I could find something interesting to do in the IT world I'd do it, but I haven't. After feasting on caviar all these years I find it hard to accept the pig slop that passes for OSs, and development environments, I've run across.
For most of this year I've been producing the VMS Audio Update, found on OpenVMS.org. If you've heard that annoying guy welcoming you to the VMS Audio Update, that would be me.
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!
