[HN Gopher] Phone Utility on VAX/VMS
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       Phone Utility on VAX/VMS
        
       Author : aleks224
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2021-12-02 12:21 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (marc.vos.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (marc.vos.net)
        
       | phuff wrote:
       | `phone` and `talk` were two of my favorite things to do on the
       | internet way back in the day. Almost better than IRC was starting
       | up a chat with somebody on the local University VAX or Unix boxes
       | that you had never met before.
       | 
       | This and the .plan/finger posts from a few days ago are playing
       | to the nostalgia of a better time on the internet. :). Iirc you
       | could also do fully animated .plan files on VAXes at the time.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | jandeboevrie wrote:
       | Had an actual chat once via OpenVMS Phone:
       | https://raymii.org/s/blog/My_first_OpenVMS.html#toc_4 - really
       | fun!
        
       | aleks224 wrote:
       | http://www0.mi.infn.it/~calcolo/OpenVMS/ssb71/6489/6489p009....
       | 
       | >Each person engaged in the conversation has a viewport on the
       | screen. Phone can display as many as six viewports at a time. The
       | viewport contains information regarding the user's name, the text
       | of the conversation, and various status indicators, such as who
       | is on hold. User names of people that you have on hold can be
       | temporarily eliminated from the screen to make room for new
       | participants.                  ANSWER      Answers the phone when
       | you receive a call.        DIAL        Places a call to another
       | user.        DIRECTORY   Displays a list of the users you can
       | call.        EXIT        Exits from the Phone utility.
       | FACSIMILE   Includes the contents of a file in your conversation.
       | HANGUP      Cancels the current phone call.        HELP
       | Displays information on how to use the Phone utility.        HOLD
       | Places the other users in a call on hold.        MAIL
       | Sends a message to another user.        PHONE       Places a call
       | to another user.        REJECT      Rejects a call from another
       | user.        UNHOLD      Reverses the previous HOLD command.
        
       | gamache wrote:
       | This was substantially similar to Unix Talk, which may be more
       | familiar to people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_(software)
        
       | cbm-vic-20 wrote:
       | It's nearly 2022 and the *nix world still doesn't have the
       | seamless clustering support that VMS had in the 80s. K8s gets
       | close, but it's not there quite yet.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | Oh, no, it's worse than that: We _did_ have it, but nobody
         | cared enough to maintain it -
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMosix
        
         | krylon wrote:
         | I never used it myself, but I was told DEC had transplanted at
         | least part of the clustering tech to Tru64.
         | 
         | Of course, that got cancelled after HP bought Compaq/DEC and
         | did not want to support two Unix systems. IIRC, they promised
         | to port the cluster stuff to HP-UX, but it looks like that
         | never happened.
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-04 23:01 UTC)