[Info-vax] Bliss was Re: Learning VMS application programming

[John H. Reinhardt]

On 2014-09-08 12:16:28 -0400, Bill Gunshannon said:

> In article <lukibf$bqm$1 at dont-email.me>,
> 	David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
>> 
>> It wasn't too long ago that there was a thread on the use of PDP-11s in
>> Canadian nuclear power stations, and included if I recall correctly,
>> their intention in continuing doing so for some time into the future.
>> Not sure if 50 years was mentioned.
> 
> It wasn't a Canadian Nuclear Plant.  It was GE who manufactures, sells
> and maintains Nuclear Power Plants in a lot of places.
>> 
>> "The right tool for the job" can be a good path to follow, and the
>> PDP-11s do some jobs very well.
> 
> I would love to see their spare parts facility.  But they would probably
> get upset at all the drooling I would be doing.
> 
> bill

It might not be what you expect.  I work as a contractor to GE and it 
wasn't that long ago in our Monday morning conferences about what went 
wrong the previous weekend there would often be incidents involving PDP 
systems, but they were all emulated on x86 hardware.  Now, this was for 
GE Rail so may not apply to the Nuclear division (They had a different 
conference), but it's possible.

FWIW, GE still uses "VAX" (They call them VAXes but actually they're 
Alphaserver 4100s) systems as frontends for their shop floor systems in 
several plants.  They run Oracle (8i) clients and Oracle*Forms via shop 
floor PCs with emulated VT100s.  They also run INGRES databases on them.

-- 

John H. Reinhardt