[Info-vax] Good/best version of (Open)VMS for a VAXstation 2000?

[John Wallace]

On May 25, 7:55 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net>
wrote:
> On 5/25/2011 2:20 PM, Steven Schweda wrote:
>
> > On May 25, 10:09 am, "Mike K."<madcrow.maxw... at gmail.com>  wrote:
> >> Recently an emulator of the VAXstation 2000 has become available on
> >> the 'Net and as I'd like to try out some of the actual VAX graphics
> >> software that using it should make possible, I'm wondering if anybody
> >> knows what version of (Open)VMS should fit best onto a system with
> >> only 14 MB of RAM...
>
> >     My real VAXstation 2000 runs (walks?) VMS V5.5-2 with
> > DECwindows Motif 1.1 (?).  With only 6MB of memory, and a
> > none-too-speedy RD54 disk, it's a little bit slow to start up.
> > In an emulated environment with more memory and/or a
> > faster/bigger "disk", what could go wrong?
>
> >     VMS V5.5-2, the last of the V5's, has some features which
> > earlier versions lack.
>
> Walks???  How about crawls!  I had one many years ago.  It belonged to
> my employer.  It was better than nothing but not much!  The sooner
> forgotten, the better!!!!!!

As usual, it depends what you're comparing it with, and what you're
attempting to do with it.

Even after the VAXstation 3100 series rendered the VAXstation 2000
obsolete as boxes for VMS with graphics, a nice piece of VAXELN-based
software called logically enough the VAXELN Window Server allowed
retired VAxstations (not just 2000s but 3100s too) to be used as
diskless X terminals (precursor to today's dataless web browsers
accessing their data and apps in the cloud, right?). The same VAXELN/
X11 software was at the core of DEC's VT1300 Xterminal, one of several
DEC Xterminals described briefly in [1] (which doesn't explicitly name
the software package involved).

Be interesting to see if the VAXStation 2000 emulation behaves right
in that environment.

[1] http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/dtj/vol3num4/vol3num4art2.txt