[Info-vax] Some questions on software for VMS 7.3 VAX (Stephen Hoffman)

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I was actually wondering about that recently too, not only with ADA but 
with the more ancient VAX Lisp distro, which I believe went by the wayside 
back around 1990 from what I've been able to dig up?

Getting any older software to run on a 7.3 system is terrible though, only 
a fraction of the binaries of the programs I've tried to set up (from the 
old freeware cd archives that are online, and I mention that as a full 
caveat on the quality of the programs I've tried to work with) work and 
there's little source availability to recompile for newer VMS versions. 
ADA seems to be under some level of legacy support by HP according to a 
page there, but that may not have been updated since distribution ended 15 
years ago, and installing an older language on newer VMS seems like it'd 
be a matter of praying to the VMS system team gods that it wouldn't 
require too many arcane rituals to get a thing last properly updated for 
5.5 to work on 7.3.

I'd love it if the welcome email would include some helpful pointers on 
where to find things that might work, but obviously that sort of thing is 
an incredibly low priority.  That being said, we hobbyists are here mostly 
just trying to figure out an interesting system, so if anyone can help us 
out with finding any licensed DEC/HP software on the hobbyist license then 
please share it.  I'd like to try out the ALL-IN-1 software suite that was 
the main selling point to small offices for years, for example.


On 1/10/2016 12:00 PM, info-vax-request at info-vax.com wrote:
>
> Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 11:26:20 -0500
> From: Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid>
> To: info-vax at info-vax.com
> Subject: Re: [New Info-vax] Some questions on software for VMS 7.3 VAX
> Message-ID: <n6u0ia$da0$1 at dont-email.me>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 2016-01-10 15:24:37 +0000, rsponholtz at gmail.com said:
>
>> RE: ADA, I don't seem to have ADA on my 7.3 hobbyist media distibution,
>> but I do have license keys. How would I go about getting the actual
>> installation stuff?
>
> You send some mail to the folks that provided you with the PAKs and the
> kit downloads, and ask for a pointer to a VAX Ada kit download.
>
> Or you scrounge an old VAX consolidated distribution kit somewhere.
>
> This should probably be included in the welcome mail.   Ah, well.
>
>

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