[Info-vax] VMS on a PC

[Tim E. Sneddon]

Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing wrote:
> In article <gkt61l$p6s$1 at usenet01.boi.hp.com>, "FredK" <fred.nospam at dec.com> writes:
>>> my guess is that should VMS ever be ported to the 8086, it would require
>>> an EFI based  64 bit 8086 system.
>> EFI will soon be on all PC's (it is already on many) - it is being heavily 
>> pushed by Intel and Microsoft who both want to see the end of the BIOS.
>>
>>> Porting costs would be
>>> far less if they can re-use the EFI stuff (probably vastly unchanged)
>>> instead of supporting the primitive BIOS.
>> Porting VMS starts with porting all the tools, like the VMS-specific 
>> compilers (start with Macro-32 and Bliss).  That is the biggest initial 
>> hurdle.  So before you have the first line of code ported you probably have 
>> 1-2 years of calendar time invested.
> 
> Wasn't there an 8086 port of Bliss for Windows NT?  (I think it's even on
> the freeware someplace.)
> 

There was/is. However, it was never released on any freeware.
It was also used by Digital Visual Fortran. Can't compile GEM
without BLISS.

Tim.