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

[Mike K.]

On May 31, 7:06 pm, "John E. Malmberg" <wb8... at qsl.network> wrote:
> What graphics adapter is on the system?
>
> That is, how many planes?
>
> If you have the 8 plane graphics, I would put VMS 7.3 and DW-Motif on it.
>
> For a real VAXstation 2000, I would run it as a LAVC Satellite node with
> only page/swap on the local disk.
>
> The 4 plane graphics is not really suitable for DW-Motif,  You have to
> set the options right so that all applications can share the same colors.
>
> With a SIM-H implementation, you make a higher speed VAXstation with
> larger disks, and more memory, just like you can do with the Sim-H VAX.
>
> -John
> wb8... at qsl.network
> Personal Opinion Only

1 plane (monochrome) graphics only at this point. Sadly, I'm not sure
if will ever go beyond that as I'm not sure if any of the other
VAXstation graphics options were ever well-enough documented to clone
in software. Heck, given the fact that NetBSD only has monochrome
framebuffer drivers for the VAX, the color stuff may not really be
documented at all.

As for simply increasing disk space, that's not really an option at
this point as the VS2000 emulator seems to be exactly that. The MFM
controller appears to be simulated, right down to the RD54 size
limit... Once the code for the new version gets released, maybe it
will be possible to hack its framebuffer into the 3900 and create a
FrankenVAX, but at the moment the author of the VS2000 stuff says that
their code is too messy to publicly release.

Mike