[Info-vax] Unix on A DEC Vax?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2013-01-18 03:49:30 +0000, Howard S Shubs said:

> In article <kda3ji$9a0$1 at dont-email.me>,
>  Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> As for the emulation market, the folks that are choosing emulation will
>> likely continue to use it until the application(s) age out, or the
>> management involved ages out, or the organization gets clobbered by
>> competition.  But those folks are probably not going to be doing very
>> much with the applications running under emulation, as that's usually
>> viewed as a dead-end for new investments, even within the organizations.
>> 
>> Hardware emulation is computing's version of the cover band.  Sometimes
>> fun.  Variously useful.  But not really what most folks want.
> 
> Perhaps not, but sometimes it's all you can have.  Such as when the
> software manufacturer has gone defunct, or might as well have (VMS port
> to x86, anyone?).  Unless someone can get HP to release source code.

Or in another way of looking at this, your organization decided to use 
non-portable features and/or platform-specific software, and for your 
own code you decided not to isolate the use of platform-specific 
features, and you decided to not invest in maintaining and updating and 
portability; you decided that an external dependency was an acceptable 
risk.

You're asking about DSSI disks for VAX servers in another recent 
posting.  If that's related to this, then consider the proverbial 
writing was on the wall for VAX in 1992 or so, with the advent of 
Alpha.  There's very little business-critical "stuff" that can't be 
ported in twenty years.

Sure.  Folks get themselves into this condundrum, and with various 
associated justifications.  Which is why we're having this discussion.  
And this is why there's a market for emulators, even though few folks 
really want to use those.

Steve Jobs wasn't fond of dependencies on outside organizations and 
entities, as the other vendors could choose to cancel or retarget the 
products[1], or potentially held ransom.  If your dependencies are more 
portable or are available from multiple sources, you're much harder to 
derail.  Is that the cheapest approach over the short term?  No.  But 
is this the cheapest over a longer term?  Very possibly yes.

Look at how you got where you are with the old gear, and why, and 
consider if repeating that same decision process is a sequence you 
would want to repeat going forward, or if you would have preferred a 
different (non-emulated) outcome.  Then look at what your business is 
going to encounter going forward, and what you have for resources.  
Like jack-posts and scaffolding and temporary bracing used in 
construction, emulation is a temporary stop-gap or intermediate 
measure.  It's not going to be a preferred end-state.  OK; so now 
you're running emulation.  How do you get out of that configuration, 
and into a simpler and more maintainable configuration?  How do you 
avoid adding more emulation?  How do you migrate your data, or your 
apps?

————
[1]Haven't folks been commenting on the Windows 8 UI?  That Microsoft 
is seemingly not headed where you want to be today?


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