[Info-vax] OT: IBM Offering $9-10 Per Share for Sun

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> JF Mezei wrote:
>> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> But I find it very difficult to believe that it is something
>>> where the "let a handful of engineers do a little work in their
>>> spare time" approach will produce anything usable.
>>
>> Usable ? No. Proof of concept that is usable as basis to do a full
>> fledged port, Yes.
> 
> What should be the point?
> 
> HP's management knows that it can be done.
> 
> They don't want to spend the money on it.
> 
> Doing a POC that shows it is possible is pointless.
> 
>> Remember that our real engineers know this stuff inside out because they
>> are not newbies who just got 2 weeks of training. They've gone through
>> the port to that IA64 thing (and know how the source come is handled to
>> allow cross platform common source code, and many of them also did the
>> VAX to Alpha port.
> 
> People with that level of skills are most likely already overloaded
> with work.
> 
>> What the midnight hack guys need to do is to show that VMS can run on
>> that platform by having solved any of the issues imposed by that
>> architecture.
> 
> VMS can run on x86-64 - it is only a question about how much need
> to be changed. If something is not available then that feature
> will not be part of VMS on that platform.
> 
> Arne

One of the best parts of the VAX-Alpha port was that VMS remained VMS 
and if your application code did not have hardware dependencies, such as 
hard coded 512 byte page size, the port was a breeze!  You called the 
same system services with the same arguments and got the same results.

I ported Tony Ivanov's "make" utility to Alpha.  I had to clean up a few 
things to make them conform to the ANSI C Standard and make the compiler 
quit complaining.  Once I cleaned up the K&Risms it compiled without 
error and worked.  ISTR that I found and fixed a fairly trivial bug 
along the way.  I think I also ported Gnu grep and Gnu gawk around the 
same time.  Those ports were also trivial to do; make the compiler stop 
complaining and they just worked.

A VMS port that does not support all the features of VMS would be a 
pretty lame port!