[Info-vax] BASIC compiler in the hobbyist distribution

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On Thu, 28 May 2015 20:04:41 -0400
Stephen Hoffman via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:

> On 2015-05-28 23:26:16 +0000, David Froble said:
> 
> > seasoned_geek wrote:
> >> On Thursday, May 28, 2015 at 1:50:52 PM UTC-5, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> >> 
> >>> That was my point.  Is Solaris even relevant in today's IT world?
> >>> If I were VSI I would not waste time trying to determine how to 
> >>> "compete" with Solaris.  And AIX while still doing OK is really a
> >>> very niche product and probably not really a competitor anymore.
> 
> Ayup.  I'd expect those AIX folks to head to Linux or to System z, if 
> they decided to port off of the current POWER systems.  Some few might 
> go to Solaris or BSD or to some other Unix.

AIX -> z is an absolute non starter.

First of all the costs and capabilities of z so far exceed AIX there isn't
any discussion at all. If they needed z they would already be on it. AIX is
competition for other commercial UNIX. That market is mighty thin these
days.

You might be able to port and write your stuff to move to another
commercial UNIX or Linux. It won't be easy and it won't be cheap.

> >> Actually worth it, more so than chasing the "free" market at this 
> >> point. The people in those particular niches, particularly AIX and 
> >> AS/400, have real business needs and have been able to justify
> >> spending of significant cash to service those needs.
> 
> So you're suggesting that the AIX folks port from a Unix system to 
> OpenVMS?   The port starts out as pretty much a rewrite.

And your comment that you would "expect those AIX folks to head to Linux or
to System z" doesn't entail a complete rewrite in the System z case? And as
I said z is magnitudes more capable then anything else being discussed
here and has nothing in common with AIX or any UNIX machine. It is not used
to run UNIX-like work. If they need UNIX-like workloads or apps they run
zLinux in an LPAR (roughly, a VM on z).

If they needed  System z they would already be running that and not AIX.
That they're not means a mainframe is not on their radar.

> One Egg One Basket designs have been fading out, thankfully.

Hard to tell from the numbers. IBM just announced healthy growth in the
mainframe server (System z) market just today.

> >> A much easier sell to tell the AIX and AS/400 crowd, hey, your boxes 
> >> were supposed to kill the VAX, it is still here. We have 24x7 up-time 
> >> measured in decades with ongoing development and you're looking at End 
> >> Of Life for your current platform, here is how you port...

I don't believe that at all (check quoting depth- this appears to be from
seasoned_geek who btw does me a great service 95% of the time since I don't
have to write anything after reading what he says- but this time I don't
agree). AIX was designed to kill other commercial UNIX. And it did pretty
well. Who's left?

The AS/400 was the grandpa of the S/34 and S/36 and was just a general
purpose office mini for commercial applications. What it did kill was just
about every DEC mini. State Farm still has a farm of AS/400s running today.
None of this is competition for VAX. It's a different market and a
different workload.

> The instructions are going to involve learning a wholly new platform, 
> and rewriting some or all of the not-COBOL and not-Fortran code 
> involved in the applications, and sorting out more than a few file and 
> database differences.  Which may well be a rewrite measured in decades, 
> for some folks.

I have lost sight what this is referring to but COBOL and FORTRAN are some
of the toughest languages to port given how many vendor extensions there
were, and all of them different. This often comes down to a rewrite too.

> > A really bad bet would be to go after IBM, again, which is part of how 
> > we got to where we are now.
> 
> Ayup.  But then I'm also wondering what sort of hardware seasoned_geek 
> would be going after these IBM customers with, here.  Probably not with 
> Oracle SPARC.  Beyond Kittson, probably not Intel Itanium.  ARM isn't 
> fast enough (yet?).  POWER?  That would be going after IBM and IBM 
> users on their own home hardware turf.   That'd involve an OpenVMS 
> port, and then making a really tough marketing case.

Earlier I did suggest VMS should be ported to POWER. POWER is now open and
real non-IBM servers are available. A premium OS like VMS needs premium
hardware. Running on Intel crapware is only going to lower VMS to their
standards. "You can't wrestle with pigs without getting dirty."

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