I thought I had registered here before, but apparently I hadn't, so now that's been taken care of...
I just this morning switched off my Alpha server at home. I had already migrated most of my services off to my Solaris x86 box, and as of last night, I finished the migration of all of my data to a virtual VAX (SIMH) running on the Solaris system.
I ran into a few issues getting SIMH to work for me, but after getting 64-bit support working so that I could have virtual hard drives larger than 2 GB and still get my networking support working, I was able to create a virtual drive holding all ~25 GB of data from my Alpha. Once that was done, I rebooted my Alpha using the OpenVMS installation CD and made use of the INIT/ERASE command. I hope I can find a good home for the Alpha.
I haven't used VMS "seriously" since back in the days I worked on PMDF development, but it had been a good server for our home domain for many years following. Although I have no practical use for VMS these days, it's nice to have a virtual VMS system lying around so I can access those files I still have from the years in which I did use VMS, including all the way back to high school (1982-84) on a VAX-11/750.
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!
