[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

glen herrmannsfeldt gah at ugcs.caltech.edu
Fri Sep 11 17:16:06 EDT 2009


Bob Eager <rde42 at spamcop.net> wrote:
< On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:57:31 -0400, John Reagan wrote:
(snip)

<> The Perkin-Elmer 8/32 (a 32-bit computer) ran a flavor of UNIX and was
<> in the field before the first VAXen.  My former employer had one.  It
<> was the first non-PDP-11 computer to run UNIX.
(snip)
 
< Anyway...I'd be interested in dates. UNIX didn't go (semi-) public until 
< about 1976 (I started using it in July 1976). Not sure about first VMS 
< dates but I thought it was about then. Presumably the PE 8/32 (that was 
< the Interdata later, wasn't it?) post-dates the PDP-11 version going 
< public as v6?

< Perhaps VMS was later than I thought, but 1976 sticks in my mind.

A friend in math class was telling me about VAX in 1976, though
I am not sure it was ready yet.  VMS may have been running internally
in DEC, though.  I remember using VMS, I believe by 1978 or early 1979,
and it still had a lot of bugs.  Also, much of the system utilities
were still running in comparability (sic) mode.  

-- glen



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