[Info-vax] OpenVMS books

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Sunday, 23 July 2017 13:02:38 UTC+1, VAXman-  wrote:
> In article <8eaf7b38-b1ee-4f5a-9685-008db56beb24 at googlegroups.com>, seasoned_geek <roland at logikalsolutions.com> writes:
> >On Saturday, July 22, 2017 at 4:12:16 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajh=C3=B8j wrote:
> >> On 7/22/2017 1:57 PM, seasoned_geek wrote:
> >> > If you are coming from a worthless x86 world you really need to
> >> > develop a completely different mindset before wading too deeply into
> >> > the land of real computers with real operating systems. Applications
> >> > in the worthless x86 world are all developed from "Me & My" point of
> >> > view. It's mine mine mine mine my own PC and my own software and if
> >> > you don't know how to use it screw you! If you say it doesn't work,
> >> > too bad!
> >>=20
> >> In a few years VMS will be part of the x86 world.
> >>=20
> >> :-)
> >>=20
> >> Arne
> >
> >They should be porting to IBM's Quantum and ignoring the obsolete x86 world=
> >.. INTEL is laying off people in droves. They won't be around much longer. T=
> >he ARM and MMX processors are replacing x86 in most things.
> >
> >Quantum is the next big thing. Ironically, since IBM is doing it, COBOL wil=
> >l be one of the first compilers for it. Even more ironically COBOL is more =
> >suited to Quantum than C/C++ or any 3GL which supported native booleans. CO=
> >BOL had 88 levels in seemingly limitless quantity. The language was/is alre=
> >ady suited for "shades of true" Quantum computing.
> >
> >Nothing against those working on the port, but, I honestly hope it never ma=
> >kes it to x86. They will end up bringing in a bunch of bug ridden OpenSourc=
> >e code to make it work and then OpenVMS will be just as shitty an OS as eve=
> >rything else on x86. We already went through this when the Itanic port lowe=
> >red the quality on Alpha. But the Itanic was a chip so bad HP had to kill o=
> >ff the Alpha when it had at least another 10 years of continuous improvemen=
> >ts left just to force a market for it.
> >
> >OpenVMS was banned from Black Hat conferences until it started getting Open=
> >Source added to it, then it was welcomed with open arms AND it started gett=
> >ing breached.
> >
> >Those legendary multi-decade uptimes VMS is famous for came in large part b=
> >ecause of the hardware. Even if you somehow manage to get real clustering t=
> >o work on x86 you will never get worthless commodity hardware to last 5 yea=
> >rs in a flat out production environment. Spinning up a new instance in a VM=
> > like Hypervisor et-al does nothing for all of the users and transactions w=
> >hich died with the board. DECdtm and ACMS could provide guaranteed delivery=
> > and guaranteed execution because in those rare instances the grid failed a=
> >long with your UPS, the OS re-start cleaned up the journaling automatically=
> > and transactions picked up from their last successful point. Today's x86 w=
> >orld is all up in arms about the billions of dollars left in shopping carts=
> > annually. They seem to think it is a consumer issue but in truth it is a w=
> >orthless platform issue. When your blade/rack/whatever $40 CPU in a $5000 p=
> >ackage died and a new instance was spun up everything was lost for the old =
> >instance. Faced with having to start over, customer went to different site.=
> > It's not a customer issue.
> 
> Over the years, I've purchased several x86 laptops for Linux.  Back In 2012, I
> purchased an HP Envy 17.  It was quite a pricey upper end x86.  It just failed
> catastrophically yesterday.  To put that in perspective, my 2002 PowerBook 17
> and 2009 MacBook Pro 17 are still functioning.  I don't think it's the x86 at
> fault here since the MBP is intel based.  However, the commodity marketspace
> of the x86 has made many of the offering based around it cheap -- not just in
> price. ;)  The Envy, for example, had a plastic frame part in a stress point
> at the hinge.  Not even a month into owning it, a screw stripped out from it.
> The touted "beats" audio in it was awful.  The whole thing buzzed like an old
> rear deck speaker in a late model car.  However, despite those hardware kinks,
> it was one of the better environments I've ever gotten Linux running upon.  I
> don't have any real-world experience with x86 servers but I do have clients
> that seem to be replacing them all too often while OpenVMS running hardware
> just keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny.
> 
> Just my $0.02.  Does anybody have any pointers to a low-cost x86 laptop?  17"
> preferred.  I may ??? have found another Envy (used) but you never know.
> -- 
> VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
> 
> I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

HP's Envy products are consumer-focused products aren't they? 
Maybe a bit like Compaq Presario (once bought, never repeated).

Over the years, I've been happy with business-class HPQ laptops, 
but the the prices when new are silly, so I've usually bought 
refurb (well, after the DEC HiNote Ultra I inherited) e.g. 
Compaq Armada E500, through to the HP Elitebook 6930 (2008?) 
I'm using right now (from the days of Windows Vista, now running
OpenSuse and Windows 7 Pro 64). 

Being business-class kit it generally comes Linux-ready, and in 
some cases (eg Suse) Linux-certified.

I'm in the process of migrating to another refurb, this time an
HP 8460p (2012ish) but it has the trendy modern 'chicklet' (dead 
rat?) keyboard which I've not used before and I'm finding it
very mixed (polite word) although it seems OK in other respects.

There are various resolutions and screen sizes available for
various apparently similar model numbers so care is needed when 
selecting and purchasing.

There were/are HP Mobile Workstation variants of some EliteBooks 
(eg 8460w was the worksstation version of the usual 8460p). Some 
of these come with 16"/17" screen options, although it's not 
something I've looked at in detail.

Might not suit what you need but it's suited me for years :)