[Info-vax] completion status from LIB$SPAWN

[David Froble]

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> Johnny Billquist wrote 2012-04-29 21:40:
>> On 2012-04-29 20:48, David Froble wrote:
>>> Paul Sture wrote:
>>>> On Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:09:41 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Paul Sture <paul at sture.ch> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> (snip)
>>>>>> There's also the history of compilers to consider. In my experience
>>>>>> many commercial users (as opposed to scientific or academic users) 
>>>>>> who
>>>>>> came to VAX/VMS in the early 1980s fell into 2 main camps:
>>>>>> a) those who came from PDPs or other minis where BASIC was very 
>>>>>> popular
>>>>>> b) those who came from more traditional mainframes where COBOL was
>>>>>> pretty much king for business applications (IBM also had PL/I users
>>>>>> in this sector).
>>>>> And scientific users, mostly using Fortran.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yes, and FORTRAN was the only HLL available for VMS when it first
>>>> became available to ordinary customers. Was the earliest FORTRAN-IV? I
>>>> did have that available on VMS at the end of 1980 (and was very glad
>>>> for business usage when FORTRAN-77 came along with character variables
>>>> among other new features).
>>>>
>>>
>>> With the introduction of the Vax 11/780 in 1978 the initial target was
>>> scientific users. Back at that time, that was a large market for DEC.
>>>
>>> Later, Basic Plus 2 was released on the 11/780 using PDP-11
>>> compatibility mode. Several of the early systems had the PDP-11
>>> compatibility mode, 11/750 and 11/730, and perhaps a few more. It
>>> worked, but, it was PDP-11 compatibility mode, with the addressing
>>> limitations, and still used the dreaded TKB and overlays.
>>
>> Back in VMS V1, basically everything was running in compatibility mode,
>> FORTRAN included. And you still used RSX tools in general.
>> One by one, VMS versions were developed of everything.
>>
>> As for PDP-11 compatibility mode in hardware, that existed in every 
>> machine
>> until the VAX 8600 (and 8650). After that, it was all done in software.
>>
>> Johnny
>>
> 
> I had the impression that it was all VAX 11/xxx modells (that had HW
> PDP-11 support), or is that a too simple answer ? :-)

I believe the compatibility mode was in the 86?? models, as already mentioned, but after 
that was the era of the c-vax and then n-vax microprocessors, and they did not have it. 
Don't know about the 9000 systems.  Through the haze, it seems that while CPUs were 
multiple boards, it may have been included, but not on the CPU on a chip systems.