[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Richard B. Gilbert]

P. Sture wrote:
> In article <nz4P8Fesn1fg at eisner.encompasserve.org>,
>  koehler at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote:
> 
>> In article <SL-dnUDFmOL_5ybXnZ2dnUVZ_u2dnZ2d at giganews.com>, "Richard B. 
>> Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:
>>> I had to use SOS early in my VMS career!  EDT was available but it 
>>> required a DEC terminal, VT-52, VT-100 or VT-200.  Nobody had realized 
>>> before we ordered our VAX, that it required proprietary terminals.  SOS 
>>> wasn't too bad as an editor but I replaced as soon as wee got some VT 
>>> compatible third party terminals for which we payed about $600 instead 
>>> of the ~$2,000 each VT-220s.
>>    SOS, which was basically the same as TOPS-20 EDIT, is an editor I've
>>    gladly left behind.  By comparison, TECO, which I learned on TOPS-10
>>    but found was not as productive as EDIT on TOPS-20, is one I keep
>>    finding uses for on VMS.  And I'd gladly keep using EDT if I didn't
>>    have such a heavily customized TPU section developed prior to the
>>    ship of the supported EDT emulation.
> 
> I vaguely remember hating SOS, but our documentation guy liked it. 
> Before a decent EDT keypad emulation for TPU came along I was working at 
> customers a lot and my first job on being granted an account was to 
> define my own TPU section with an EDT keypad. I did have it on TK50, but 
> obviously not many places would let me load from that.
> 

I found that a 3-1/2" floppy disk was very handy for loading a skeleton 
login.com, edtini.edt, and a couple of other handy tools.  Since I was 
the System Manager nobody dared to object!  At the price I charged, it 
would have cost them dearly to have me type it all in and debug it.