surfing yesterday, I came across simh and openvms hobbyist.
What there is a VAX emulator. Wow signed up, got my media on order. Only problem is I haven't touched a VAX for about 10 years.
In another life I use to cut code in Macro32, fortran and the dreaded basic+, C always seemed to run very slow. Started off on 750s, 785s and when we had our office block finally knocked down, there was an 8810 still in the computer room. Having by that time deserted DEC for Sun.
These days it is java and unfortunately C#, I chucked out all my VAX/VMS documentation/notes etc some years ago, so this is going to be an exercise it resurrecting long dead brain cells.
So first question, is there an on line documentation set available anywhere.
I am hardly a newbie with VMS, probably forgot more than many people knew. I used to write VAX unibus device drivers. and also was my companies VMS guru. Boy the amount of QIO calls I must have done for custom screen interfaces.
Interestingly the real oddball was using quad word time/date stamps within rms indexes as being least significant bits first ,It was a real screw up. so ended up with a little routine to reverse the quad word order of bits before you wrote a record and run it again after reading before you then do the conversion to real date strings etc.
AS for java &c#. That is what I am doing these days. Never would have thought of running that sort of language on a VAX.
Posts: 33 Location: North Brunswick, NJ Joined: 12.03.08
Posted on May 01 2008 13:36
There should have been no need to reverse the bytes. You could have set up a segmented key. I'm not sure of the performance of those, though. Also, later versions of VMS, at least on Alpha, supported quadword keys.
pfau wrote:
There should have been no need to reverse the bytes. You could have set up a segmented key. I'm not sure of the performance of those, though. Also, later versions of VMS, at least on Alpha, supported quadword keys.
Not bytes, bits, yes the key would have been segmented if it had been simple bytes.
By the time Alpha was a reality, we had already jumped on the sun/unix bandwagon. That was a culture shock, coming from a DEC background all the tools I needed and took for granted were missing. Suddenly the interface was raw, performance management/monitoring crude. complex batch processing etc not as good as you knew it could be.
That is why I am keen to get my SIMH system up and running. Just to remember what I used to take for granted. I keep looking out for the mailman hoping he has my distribution kit. Waiting to join my HPUG to get my license paks. I get the feeling the wife will again become a computing widow. Still at least that means she will nag me to take time out and take the bike out the garage for a blast.
Note that the CHARON-VAX and Alpha emulators are available for free to hobbyists.
When you get it running you have a choice of TCPIP products - HP, TCPWARE or MULTINET - all available for free.
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!
