[Info-vax] OT: Computing Experience, What brought you to VMS?

[Hans Vlems]

In 1979 I worked as a chemistry student for the University of Technology in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. My job was to connect chromatographs to a DG Nova4 minicomputer under RDOS. I only remember it had a very neat assembly language. 
The data was to be sent to the B7700 mainframe for further processing. As somebody else here noted, nothing compares to the MCP and its primary development language, Burroughs Extended Algol. After a while a PDP 11/40 running RT-11 (V3 and later V4) replaced the Nova. It served as an RJE station for the B7700 too. It made data transfer to the B7700 a lot easier and took care of ASCII to EBCDIC conversions. In 1982 the Burroughs got replaced by a cluster of VAX 11/750's, soon swapped for heavier VAXes but 32 bits wasn't up to the precision of Burroughs'48 bits and the university shifted to Cyber systems available at other universities (SARA).
My first real job was with a company that tried to develop a silicon compiler. We started on a VAX 11/750 and an 11/785 followed soon.
Next I worked for Fuji which was a heavy DEC user for plant control. When I got there all they had was  two 11/750's cluster with an 8250. No PC's. When I left in 2002, there were about 80 VAXes, 40 Alpha's and more than 1000 PC's (they didn't fit in one DECnet area any more).

In 1987 I got my first VAX at home, a VAXstation 2000 which I still own. It is operational though the RD54 failed many years ago.
Since then I collected more systems, VAxes, Alpha's and one Itanium. 
My daughters grew up with the notion that computer meant VAX/VMS. My neighbours had sons and bought an early MS-DOS Philips PC (one with Hercules monochrome graphics, that period). Occasionally the game crashed the computer and the boys just pulled the mains plug and restarted the computer. My girls were very much surprised with that. The boys said, how do you do recover from a crash then?
Linda's answer: we don't, we have a VAX and it always runs. 

I've visited several DECUS Europe seminars, and found them always exciting. 
I'll certainly miss the atmosphere of the Wizard sessions and the talks with the VMS developers. I've also visited a couple of IBM seminars and, though technically very interesting, lacked the spirit of DECUS somewhat. 
The way it looks Burroughs' MCP might survive VMS as a supported production platform.
I'm glad I can keep VMS running at home for quite some time!

Hans