[Info-vax] OSes

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-01-13 22:01:54 +0000, Bill Cunningham said:

> "Stephen Hoffman" <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote in message 
> news:n76gt6$kgs$1 at dont-email.me...
> 
>> For most folks, the simplest DEC system is probably the VAXmate or 
>> equivalent - one of the older DEC x86 boxes running Microsoft Windows 
>> or Linux, or whatever you're familiar with.
> 
>     Definately *nixs. unix or linux. But I like console mode too.

So scrounge an old DEC PC or a VAXmate (confusingly, a DEC VAXmate is a 
Windows PC system, not a VAX), and use that.   You'll have then 
acquired and used DEC gear, and can boot an old Windows or Linux distro 
on DEC hardware.  Which is one interpretation of what you had asked for 
back in the OP.

>     So then using simh you can get online through the MAC address 
> interface but simh can't handle windows.

That sentence is gibberish.   That reads rather like something from a 
Markov chain text-generating bot.   Are you a bot, Bill?

Since you're not a bot, here's why that sentence is gibberish, with 
some classic Internet pedantry included, and probably even with a few 
mistakes here...

The SIMH package is a software package that emulates computing 
hardware.  SIMH can emulate various computing hardware systems and 
architectures, including VAX.

MAC is an acronym for Media Access Control — part of IEEE 802 
networking, among other uses.   MAC is also an acronym for Message 
Authentication Code, which is a component of most (all?) recent 
cryptographic algorithms.   And MAC is an acronym for Mandatory Access 
Controls, a particular type of software security found on some systems, 
including (via SELinux or otherwise) Linux.   Older OpenVMS and VMS 
versions also had add-on support for MAC-based security, via a package 
known as SEVMS.   There are some other uses of MAC around, but these 
are among the most common encountered within systems and software.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_access_control
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_authentication_code

Mac — which is not an acronym — is a product name used for various 
Apple computer systems, with all current Mac systems capable of running 
the OS X software from Apple, Microsoft Windows, Linux or some other 
operating systems.  Mac is derived from an earlier Apple product name 
Macintosh, a type of apple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh

SIMH does not emulate x86 or Alpha, two of the computer architectures 
that can are necessary for and that can boot Microsoft Windows 
operating system.  There have been versions of Microsoft Windows for 
x86-32, x86-64, ARM, Itanium, PowerPC, Alpha and MIPS.   Other than 
x86-32 and x86-64, none of the other architectures have been 
particularly successful platforms for Microsoft Windows.   None of 
these platforms boot Microsoft Windows, which means that Windows cannot 
boot on SIMH.

SIMH can be built for OS X, OpenVMS, Windows, Linux, BSD and various 
other operating systems, being that it is written as portable C code.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIMH

Which in aggregate is why what you wrote... makes very little sense.

> Ok right. So there is a way though to get windows with openvms?

Nope.   There is a way to get X Windows with OpenVMS, which is very 
different from Microsoft Windows.  X Windows is the user interface for 
most Linux distros, there's an X Windows server for OS X, and the 
DECwindows product for OpenVMS is based on X Windows, and can 
communicate with X Windows Servers running on other systems including 
on (via add-on software) with Microsoft Windows and OS X, and via the X 
Windows Server that's an integrated part of most Linux and BSD 
distributions.

> I am using simh and openvms on a linux.

Okay.   Then do you have particular questions about OpenVMS or related 
packages including DECwindows, or VAX, Alpha or Itanium servers?   If 
you should have SIMH questions, I'd suggest using the SIMH mailing 
list.  If you have Linux questions, well, there are many places for 
those to be asked, including the Stack sites.   If you have PDP-11 
questions, there's another newsgroup for those.


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