[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[R.A.Omond]

Bob Eager wrote:

> *some* of the Multics features (e.g. the mapping of files into virtual 
> memory as the only method of access, thus unifying paging and I/O) were 
> incorporated into EMAS, developed at Edinburgh. That worked on anything 
> with a decent page size; started off on ICL System 4 (?) and was ported 
> to the ICL 2900. Also on the Amdahl mainframes, and the IBM XA 
> architecture (I did work to port it to a 4381).

Yes, Bob, EMAS started off on the ICL System 4/75.  The Wikipedia entry
for EMAS at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Multiple_Access_System

is pretty accurate as far as my memory goes.  I did my B.Sc (Computer
Science) at Edinburgh in the mid-1970s and remember EMAS with great
fondness.  Quoting from the Wikipedia article:

"EMAS had several advanced (for the time) features, including dynamic 
linking, multi-level storage, an efficient scheduler, a separate 
user-space kernel ('director'), a user-level shell ('basic command 
interpreter'), and a memory-mapped file architecture. Such features lead 
EMAS supporters to claim that their system was superior to Unix for the 
first 20 years of the latter's existence."

Things have steadily got worse since those good old days ;-)