a few words about myself...I am 35 years old, work in the IT business, live in north / western part of Germany and have a couple of years of experience with MS Windows server OS and the BSD family.
I had my first experience with DEC Equipment in 2004 (a DEC 3000/300LX ("Pelica+")) which was first running OpenBSD Alpha, but for curiosity I got my hands on Hobbyist OpenVMS 7.3-1 license pretty soon. My experience was very limited, system ran on serial terminal and I did not have the time to play with it, so I sold it (regretted much later - this system was built like a tank).
In 2012 I got hands on two Alphastations 4/166, one working fine, other one has defective power supply (would like to exchange it with a PC-style PS - anyone experience in rewiring ?). The working one has OpenVMS 8.3 (incl. DEC Windows), currently I am digging deeper into OpenVMS, configuration and general system understanding. Would love to bring both together in a working manner...well...cluster / sharing research.
C programming is one motivation for me, according to OpenVMS reputation I would expect a well designed programming environment and the opportunity to learn more about OpenVMS in general.
In my humble opinion, OpenVMS is worth learining it and by far not dead yet
(though I would love to verify the reputation of "when downtime is not an option") vs. reality (still running installations in government, military, public transport, stock exchanges etc.), kudos to Hewlett Packard for keeping it running on a total of 3 totally different hardware platforms and providing excellent documentation.
BR
Peter
Edited by petet0n76 on March 09 2012 04:30
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!
