[Info-vax] Last VAX release musings (was VAXStation 3100)

[Robert A. Brooks]

On 1/16/2019 9:59 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> 
> My memory is that DEC decided they needed a final release, and put out the V7.3 
> stuff.

Compaq in the spring of 2001, coincident with the release of OpenVMS Alpha V7.3, 
codenamed Kestrel.

It has been often said that OpenVMS VAX V7 releases could have been more 
accurately numbered starting with V6.3, because there were no major kernel 
changes between V6.2 and V7.0 for the VAX that would have required a major
version bump. I have not looked at the release notes for OpenVMS VAX V7.3 in a 
long time; from memory, the most noteworthy new feature was support for Minicopy 
bitmaps with
Host-Based Volume Shadowing.

Subsequent builds of a never-released OpenVMS VAX V7.4 (codenamed Emerald) were 
done for a bit after the release of V7.3; I have no idea what (if any) new 
features that would have contained.

Given the internal data structure changes that happened for OpenVMS Alpha V7,
it made it difficult to keep the two separate source pools in synch.  There was 
also very little (not none, but very little) engineering interest in anything
VAX-related then.

-- 
                  -- Rob