[Info-vax] Vax Station 4000 VLC

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-12-25 08:30:13 +0000, David Wade said:

>   Well I must say I am surprised at the quantity of discussion this 
> topic generated...
> 
>   Whilst installing VMS on a couple of old VAX boxes I did wonder why 
> DECNET would install and start without me having to tweak some obscure, 
> low level, system parameters, yet Fortran wouldn't.

You'll probably want to upgrade from DECnet-Plus (also known as DECnet 
OSI, and as DECnet Phase V) to DECnet Phase IV, if you're at all short 
of system resources on that VAXstation 4000.

Unless you need DECnet over IP or some such, or should you want to have 
the ability to claim you're running OSI networking, DECnet Phase IV is 
easier to manage, and lighter on resources.

DECnet Phase IV will require manual edits to the site-specific startup 
procedure, though. Unlike DECnet-Plus.

DECwindows and DECnet-Plus and—if you get there—clustering will tend to 
max out most any older VAX, particularly if you're inclined to compile 
and link apps, or otherwise use some memory for other tasks.

> I am now getting used to the procedure but there seems to be some new 
> parameter to tweak for each product I install...

That and AUTOGEN and MODPARAMS.DAT have been an ongoing effort for all 
involved.

Experienced OpenVMS users are accustomed to the tooling and the 
documentation style, and might not reflect upon what less-experienced 
folks are presented with here, though.

The product developers will often toss the resulting issues and 
limitations along for the product documentation folks to paper over and 
to document around, and for the end-users to deal with, too.

The OpenVMS developers haven't made a substantive change here in a 
~quarter-century.  Not around parameters, software installations, 
patching and related.  Not since the advent of PCSI in OpenVMS V6.1 in 
early 1994.  OpenVMS VAX didn't adopt PCSI for itself due to 
then-current media-related issues; VMSINSTAL tape media kits, et al.

> I must also admit that I don't yet have DEC Windows running on my VLC, 
> partly as the fan in the Laptop PC I use for reading the VMS 
> documentation has died, and it refused to book. When I re-assembled it 
> after cleaning the fan I managed to damage the WiFi board because I put 
> a long screw in a hole that needs a medium length screw...
> .. I should have spotted it but I was in a hurry. Any way the laptop 
> boots and a new WiFi card is on its way, and I will be more carefull 
> next time... The old IBM think pads actually had numbers next to the 
> holes that told you which length screw to use...

An Apple iPad or equivalent tablet works very well for viewing PDF and 
related documentation.  Unpack the HPE ODL kits and load it all into 
the iOS PDF tool or equivalent, and off you go.  The PDF documentation 
and its content and navigation is another longstanding issue with 
OpenVMS, too.  What was once pretty good documentation has aged—the 
documentation structure dates back ~30 years with the advent of the 
consolidated online documentation (ConOLD) kitting from ~1988—and has 
become outdated and comparatively harder to use, and in need of 
substantial updates around the contents, tooling, presentation, and 
navigation.  Longstanding OpenVMS folks are used to the limits here 
too, and don't necessarily notice these issues.

VSI has lots of work ahead here.  None of which will ever get to VAX, 
and probably little of which will get to Alpha and Itanium except as 
those changes might make an easier conduit to get folks to OpenVMS on 
x86-64.  It's trade-offs, all the way down.



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