[Info-vax] OpenVMS.Org quick pool

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

David Froble wrote 2012-08-18 22:22:
> Keith Parris wrote:
>> On 8/16/2012 1:21 PM, John Wallace wrote:
>>> On Aug 16, 2:37 pm, Ian Miller <g... at uk2.net> wrote:
>>>> OpenVMS.Org are looking to collect and confirm some information about
>>>> OpenVMS users and usage. Please take a few minutes to complete this 13
>>>> question poll. Your input is
>>>> valuable.http://www.openvms.org/pages.php?page=Quick-Poll
>>>
>>> "would you use OpenVMS I64 running on x86 using an Integrity Virtual
>>> Machine in a production environment"
>>>
>>> ?
>>>
>>> If that is intended to read as it is written, then it might be helpful
>>> to expand on the concept a bit (a linked page? or is the Wikipedia
>>> article sufficient?), for the benefit of those VMS folk who until now
>>> have had no interest in what's been available on IA64.
>>
>> A number of folks today run OpenVMS VAX under a VAX emulator or OpenVMS
>> Alpha under an Alpha emulator, running on top of an x86 platform.
>>
>> I read this question as: Would you be willing to run the Itanium version
>> of OpenVMS under an Itanium emulator (using a hypothetical example of HP
>> VM ported to x86) on top of an x86 platform, and do so for your
>> Production work?
>>
>
> That then would raise the question, which hardware is "easiest", "fastest",
> "best" to emulate ?
>
> I'd be highly surprised if there is any software running on VMS on IA-64
> for which there is no sources.  The painful lessons were first learned
> going from VAX to Alpha.  If there is, well, the "hindmost" is usually the
> first to get caught.
>
> Other than speed, how many users really needed Alpha?  Ok, availability
> too.  I wonder what percentage of those still using VMS actually need the
> capabilities of Alpha.

That is, still using VMS *today* that needed Alpha *then* ?
Or that could run their VMS operations on VAX *today* ??

I guess most "still using VMS" today are larger operations.

And didn't most of us saw the benefits? Faster and larger memories.
Noone needed larger memory than VAX supported? Well, maybe not from
day one of Alpha, but a bit later and in particular *today*?


> There is also those things implemented on Alpha,
> but never implemented on VAX.  Even so, that is software, not hardware.
>
> A good question is, "is an emulated Alpha surperior to an emulated VAX?",
> all else being equal?  I'd be interested to know.

Yes, since Alpha's run later versions of VMS (and Rdb) then VAX does.
That's enough for me.

Jan-Erik.