[HN Gopher] Public Access OpenVMS System
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Public Access OpenVMS System
Author : BSDobelix
Score : 72 points
Date : 2025-01-28 12:20 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (decuserve.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (decuserve.org)
| Palomides wrote:
| what interesting software is there to run on a VMS machine?
| linksnapzz wrote:
| I believe the point of VMS is to run boring software as
| reliably as possible. Train-ticketing backends, air-traffic
| control, warehouse management etc.
|
| It's interesting to see how little effort it takes to keep
| stuff running.
| tssva wrote:
| I used to work for a health informatics company and our
| department level systems ran on OpenVMS. Radiology
| management, pharmacy management, etc.
| dizhn wrote:
| talk? maybe ytalk?
| drummojg wrote:
| I still miss bitnet.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| It's still here (HNET) ;)
|
| https://moshix.dynu.net/
|
| https://github.com/moshix/BITNETServices
| whartung wrote:
| Moria (now Angband) was originally on VMS, written in VAX
| Pascal.
|
| We remember it well because it was distributed as a single,
| large file, and our 11/730 just choked and died trying to
| compile it.
|
| The MicroVAX was much better at coping with it.
| loph wrote:
| VAX Notes. Perhaps the original groupware. Not really useful
| without collaborators any more, since DEC is dead and took that
| cultural fork with it.
|
| See https://thoughtsofanidlemind.com/2012/12/14/vax-notes/
|
| and the referenced paper
|
| https://thoughtsofanidlemind.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/...
| BSDobelix wrote:
| VMS-empire ;)
|
| http://www.catb.org/~esr/vms-empire/
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| I always played Rogue and Trek on the VAX when I had to go in
| with my mom when she worked weekends.
| chasil wrote:
| You can also follow this guide to run your own VMS 1.0 on a VAX
| 11/780 emulator.
|
| https://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_VMS_V1.0_on_SIMH
| BSDobelix wrote:
| Or your modern OpenVMS V9.2 x86 as a VM:
|
| Community license:
|
| https://vmssoftware.com/products/licenses/
| actionfromafar wrote:
| So unfortunate VMS was never open sourced like Solaris was.
| It was really interesting, and deserved a fate other than
| obscurity. Would be cool if zOS was open sourced, but on the
| other hand the various cloud control planes seem like the
| "real" OS nowadays in many settings.
| chasil wrote:
| The original VMS kernel was written in assembler. It is
| doubtful that anyone would want it.
|
| I don't know how later versions changed.
|
| In any case, Windows NT (re)used a number of concepts from
| VMS.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Development
|
| "Although NT was not an exact clone of Cutler's previous
| operating systems, DEC engineers almost immediately noticed
| the internal similarities. Parts of VAX/VMS Internals and
| Data Structures, published by Digital Press, accurately
| describe Windows NT internals using VMS terms."
| skissane wrote:
| DEC used to ship source listings to customers. Not in a
| form you could compile - a CD-ROM full of PDFs. Although
| not freely redistributable, there are ISO files floating
| around the Internet
|
| For MVS, the old public domain versions came with some
| source code, but it doesn't match up well with the binaries
| (the supplied source is an older version missing many
| patches the binaries have). Newer copyrighted versions they
| made source listings available on microfiche-it would be
| great if someone who still has those microfiche were to
| scan them, although I think people are hesitant to do so
| since they worry IBM might react negatively (they are
| copyrighted and possibly under NDA too). And then they
| stopped issuing microfiche, but apparently they replaced it
| with some system that IBM customers can log in to and look
| at some of the source code file-by-file but not download
| it-I imagine they log every file you look at and if you
| look at too much they might ask you what you are doing. I
| know other vendors have similar systems-e.g. Oracle has
| such a system to let their ERP customers look at some of
| their ERP source code. (Or at least they did when I worked
| there years ago-I assume they still do.)
|
| MVS and z/OS always had another issue - large chunks of
| them are written in a proprietary programming language
| (PL/S or its successor PL/X) for which IBM has never
| released a compiler. Well, there was a period many years
| ago when IBM was licensing their PL/X compiler to ISV's
| relatively cheaply, but that didn't last long. Using a
| proprietary language with no publicly available compiler
| helped discourage customers from modifying the source code
| they received, and also helped discourage would-be cloners,
| especially in the early days when the idea of software
| copyright was still very new and hadn't yet been
| extensively tested in court.
|
| I also have heard they still ship some source for JES2, a
| bit of an exception to the general rule of "object code
| only" (OCO).
| tac19 wrote:
| Have you ever been able to get a community license? I've
| submitted a request for one several times over the last year
| or two and never received a response, not even a denial.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Not OP but I got one. Some days ago I got another mail with
| a new version followed by another mail with a bugfix.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| Yeah i got one too (around 3 years ago), and some days ago
| they sent me a email with the updated image.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Can't take a cosy nap on top of a VAX 11/780 emulator, though.
| whalesalad wrote:
| that box seems to already have the hug of death
| philprx wrote:
| wooohooo... it had been a long long time since I last entered VMS
| command in a terminal !
|
| Thank you sooo much for making this happen! very happy here
| netfortius wrote:
| sys$system brings tears to my eyes...
| ForOldHack wrote:
| The is the beyond of cool. Is the hardware real?
| BSDobelix wrote:
| Yep it a AlphaServer ES40 with 4 cpu's, 2GB ram
| sgt wrote:
| Does anyone remember another public VMS system called "Carl" or
| Carl.best.net or something like that? I had fun playing with VMS
| on it, but that was years ago.
| lizknope wrote:
| VMS was the first multiuser system I used in 1991. I was amazed
| that a single computer could have 300 users logged in all doing
| their own thing.
|
| I learned to program in C and tried using Borland Turbo C on a
| DOS. Go outside of the array index and you could easily crash the
| entire machine which meant reboot and try it again. I thought the
| concept of memory protection was incredible! Why didn't every
| computer have that?
|
| It was the first time I saw email, sending messages, and the
| phone utility for chatting with other users while waiting for
| your programs to run in the background.
|
| I moved on to an IBM RT running AIX and got hooked on Unix.
| That's the system I wanted and have been running Linux since
| 1994. But VMS still holds a special place.
| TristanBall wrote:
| On of my favourite hardware investments as a teenager trying to
| learn c and assembly under dos was a caching hard drive
| controller.
|
| It made those post crash reboots so much faster!
|
| Talk about solving the wrong problem...
| nickdothutton wrote:
| My first serious (multiuser) system experience was VMS. The
| concurrency, the power of DCL, the record based nature of files,
| the mail box concept for process communication, the accounting
| system, the granular privs, the cluster concept. I came to UNIX
| second and still miss some of these things.
| edarchis wrote:
| VMS had asynchronous programming to its core. Most system calls
| could be performed synchronously or async. You just had to give
| the async call a flag that would indicate when the response was
| ready. So you could read a file or connect to the network,
| continue execution and when you actually needed the answer, just
| sys$wait(flag). Or have callback functions. It worked extremely
| well as some else mentioned, 64Mb of RAM was enough to handle 200
| interactive users with RDB (database IMO far superior to Oracle
| that was acquired by them and promptly buried)
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > VMS had asynchronous programming to its core. Most system
| calls could be performed synchronously or async.
|
| This continued, of course, in its spiritual successor Windows
| NT.
| not2b wrote:
| Yes, same architect (Dave Cutler), and WNT is (V+1)(M+1)(S+1)
| though they probably didn't do that on purpose.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| Alas. My account has expired.
| rbc wrote:
| I'm familiar with a site that once had around 30 Vaxen for
| scientific computing in the late 1980s. This included Vax
| 11/780s, 11/750s, uVax I's, uVax II's and eventually a Vax 8800
| used to feed a Cray Y-MP. All long gone. Linux has moved in and
| taken over.
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