[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Rich Alderson wrote:
> rf10 at cl.cam.ac.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:
> 
>>  billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
>>> 	Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer at gsi.de> writes:
>>>> Paul Anderson schrieb:
> 
>>>>> Unix is older than VMS but don't confuse me with the facts.  ;-)
> 
>>>> At worst the difference is a few years only
>>>> (and don't confuse Multics with Unix),
> 
>> multics was another interesting system, hampered far more than vms by
>> being based on a special design of hardware.  (i don't actually know
>> of any port of multics to a different architecture; when i re-read
>> organick's book a little while back, i was amazed that they achieved
>> anything as a multi-user service on such limited hardware.)
> 
> Although some features of Multics did inspire other operating systems, no
> one ever ported the entirety of Multics to any hardware not descended from
> the original GE645.  Honeywell dubbed the family "the 6000 series" when they
> bought GE's computer business, and moved Multics to the 6180, followed by
> the Level 66, Level 68, and DPS-8M.
> 
> The only remaining Multics-capable hardware is the Dockmaster system, now
> at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, but even this
> system can no longer run because the HDAs were removed from the disk drives
> when it was de-installed from its home at the NSA.

Those disks were probably chock full of "burn before reading" material. 
  No way to be certain that the data was erased beyond hope of recovery 
so  the HDAs went into the fire.