[Info-vax] Some questions on software for VMS 7.3 VAX

[David Froble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2016-01-12 14:10:04 +0000, Bob Koehler said:
> 
>> In article 
>> <mailman.114.1452527624.14919.info-vax_rbnsn.com at rbnsn.com>, 
>> lists at openmailbox.org writes:
>>> On Mon, 11 Jan 2016 10:23:48 -0500
>>> Stephen Hoffman via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2016-01-11 14:35:16 +0000, Bob Koehler said:
>>>>
>>>>> In article <mailman.25.1452503591.23756.info-vax_rbnsn.com at rbnsn.com>,
>>>>> lists at openmailbox.org writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Fortran 90/95
>>>>>
>>>>> I think VAXen are stuck at Fortran 77.
>>>
>>> That would be somewhat surprising. Would they really put the VAX out 
>>> to pasture when it came to something VMS/VAX was so famous for!?
> 
> So is that trolling, willful blindness, or genuine ignorance?
> 
> Yes, the VAX compilers are fossils.   Not that the current compilers on 
> Alpha and Integrity aren't now a revision or two behind the current 
> major language standards, too.
> 
> VAX is utterly and totally dead, having been replaced over twenty years 
> ago.
> 
> That replacement was during the era before Windows 95 and Windows NT 
> became established, too.
> 
> OpenVMS itself is very much on a retirement and deprecation schedule 
> over at HPE.
> 
> Whether existing sites migrate to VSI products, or migrate off of OpenVMS?
> 
> OpenVMS may still be entirely dead too, if VSI can't find and pull some 
> sufficiently profitable rabbits out of their hat.
> 
> But VAX?  VAX was a pain to back-port software to back in the 1990s 
> after the OS forked, and the problems and the effort involved in 
> backports has only increased , and particularly increased after 64-bit 
> support was added to OpenVMS.   This other than BASIC, Macro32 and 
> Bliss32, that is — most of the other compilers moved to newer standards 
> and to 64-bit support and to newer code generation tools and APIs.   The 
> migration from VCG to GEM was already mentioned else-thread, and code 
> generation is being entirely replaced again with LLVM with the x86-64 port.
> 
>>    Yes, I remember when HP, Sun, an IBM were pushing that thier UNIX 
>> workstations had Fortran compilers that were compatable with "VAX 
>> Fortran".
>>
>>    Sadly, that is no longer the defacto industry standard.  I get much 
>> better support from gfortran on other platforms.
> 
> VAX and OpenVMS in general has not been the industry standards in much 
> of anything since the 1990s.  Not in anything that folks were willing to 
> pay for.
> 

VAX is dead ..
Alpha is dead ..
itanic is dead ..

Perhaps VMS has a chance on x86, we will see ..

Hobbyist and retro-computing can still use the above HW.