[Info-vax] free shell accounts?

[Matthew H McKenzie]

It's really only been offline for 2 weeks or so.

I have a 7.3 account at "polarhome" in Sweden.
It takes a few days to set up, and you need to register by snail mail.
It is not totally free, there is a nominal $10 fee

They are not upgrading the alpha and I appear to be the only user.

Matt.
"MG" <marcogbNO at SPAMxs4all.nl> wrote in message 
news:54bacc32$0$15939$e4fe514c at dreader35.news.xs4all.nl...
> Stan Radford schreef op 17-jan-2015 om 21:02:
>> [A]re there any free shell providers for VMS so I could
>> see what this is all about?
>
> There used to be not just a single VMS system, but an actual
> cluster (i.e. VMScluster), better known as "Deathrow" (via the
> Internet Archive Wayback Machine you can still see what it
> comprised, here: <http://deathrow.vistech.net>).  Sadly, not
> too long ago, it went 'offline' and has been ever since.
> (See the comp.os.vms Usenet archives for more information on
> that.)
>
> There are also a handful of other remote access systems, but
> they're often catering more to the 'retrocomputing' crowd
> and therefore older versions of VMS (mostly running on VAX
> hardware).  From the top of my head, there's IPv7.net, but I
> haven't been there in some time.  Here's a summary of systems
> available, some with guest access, as mentioned:
> <http://decnet.ipv7.net/nodetab-en.html>
>
> Normally Encompasserve/DECUserve's EISNER:: node is also
> available, but it has been offline once more since yesterday
> (due to technical issues, see the recent threads/posts about
> it here on comp.os.vms).  For moreinformation, see:
> <http://decuserve.org>
>
> There are probably some people willing to make their systems
> available to you, for short periods of time, I'm sure.  (They
> would of course have to come forward first, though.)
>
> I don't have any hardware anymore nowadays, I used to have
> numerous AXP (DEC Alpha) and IPF (Itanium IA-64 processor
> family, i.e. HP Integrity) systems.  Nowadays I only have
> my DEC Multia/UDB VX40B with a low-power 166-MHz AXP DECchip
> 21066/LCA4, a mere 256 Mbytes RAM, ~73 Gbyte U320 SCSI disk
> (with necessary interface adapter, in SE mode), 10BASE-T
> half-duplex Ethernet NIC and some other items).  It's not
> much, mostly a curiosity.  But, I guess I could reinstall it
> with VMS, but it only maximally supports V7.3 (or V7.3-1,
> with some luck) and with various limitations, instead of HP
> Tru64 UNIX V5.1B that I have on it at the moment.  So, that
> won't help you much if you're interested in a contemporary
> VMS setup.  I don't have too much interesting software to run,
> like Rdb or whatever.  (I'd also need to double check if I
> even have all the Layered Products for V7.3.)
>
>
>> Is there any graphical desktop and will it work over normal
>> X-forwarding from a shell account or is everything command
>> line?
>
> There is, but beware... there are some snags.  'Normally' you
> could from an actual non-emulated/hardware VMS system (and
> preferably with a graphics card present) run X sessions or
> individual X applications (e.g.) forwarded through SSH.  VMS
> uses a port of CDE called DECwindows (a.k.a. "DECwindows New
> Desktop", where "DECwindows Classic" is the pre-CDE windowing
> environment as seen in Ultrix and some other operating systems
> of DEC, too).
>
>
>> I am fine with command line but a GUI is sometimes easier
>> when using a shell account especially if they only allow you
>> to sign on once because then it's harder to be in an editor
>> and read man pages etc. unless Emacs is running there.
>
> I agree.  Unfortunately, VMS doesn't have nearly the amount
> of GUI tools as, say, Digital/Tru64 UNIX.  But, as you say,
> just being able to assorted windows (e.g. terminal emulator
> instances) is very useful in and by itself.
>
>  - MG
>
>