[Info-vax] READ and WRITE vs. SEARCH/OUTPUT

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/24/2012 4:06 AM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> Richard B. Gilbert schrieb:
>> VMS is not widely used these days. Princeton University had VAXen in:
>> Plasma Physics Laboratory, Gas Dynamics Laboratory, Physics
>> Department, and the Chemistry Department. It doesn't help if the
>> students can't use it, or if they choose to use something else. The
>> University as a whole was IBM oriented. The Computing Center had an
>> IBM 360/91, one of eighteen or so that were made. It was what passed
>> for a "super computer" in those days.
>
> This scenario wasn't/isn't unusual for academia (uni's and bigger labs).
> For larger tasks one had big iron in the Computing Centre.
> For data taking or process control one used PDP's or, later, VAXen.
> So until the late 1980's there was little chance for a student
> *not* to be exposed to one of those DEC products. From the end
> of the 1980's onwards, however, Unix took over. DEC still had
> a good chance to ride that wave too, e.g. by migrating their
> large VMS base to Ultrix, while constantly improving the latter.
> DEC chose to blow that opportunity.

Or made OSF/1 a bigger success. Many people consider OSF/1 aka
DU aka Tru64 to be a lot better than Ultrix.

Note that they would still have been toast today, but Unix
would have given them 10-15 more years until Linux and Windows
would have taken over anyway.

Arne