[Info-vax] OpenVMS on x86 and Virtual Machines -- An Observation

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2019-01-31 kl. 18:47, skrev Jan-Erik Söderholm:
> Den 2019-01-31 kl. 18:31, skrev Dave Froble:
>> On 1/31/2019 12:06 AM, IanD wrote:
>>> CentOS is loved because it's the free arm of redhat
>>>
>>> David, VM's are addictive, once you try them out you'll love and 
>>> appreciate the flexibility they bring
>>>
>>> Sure, there's some fun about learning various switches and unique 
>>> configuration setting on hardware panels but as get older that fun 
>>> slowly fades and your left just wanting to get a job done
>>>
>>> Virtualbox is ok and had got better. VMware workstation used to be 
>>> awesome until they fired all the developers and did the development 
>>> offshore somewhere.
>>>
>>> You could always sign up for something like AWS or azure free tier (you 
>>> basically get a year for free) and play with spinning up and down 
>>> instances. AWS makes it very easy.
>>> There plenty of YouTube videos walking you through the process
>>>
>>> After playing with VM's you'll start to feel somewhat frustrated when 
>>> you go back to physical hardware, but that's it's terrible, it's just 
>>> that VM's open up an order of flexibility that you don't realise you 
>>> missed because you never had it :-)
>>>
>>
>> Well, I downloaded Virtual Box V6.??, and tried to install it on a 32 bit 
>> Win XP box.  No luck, it needs 64 bit WEENDOZE.
>>
>> I had a V4.2.? I must have downloaded in the past.  No longer supported, 
>> but, I doubt it stopped working just because it's no longer supported. 
>> Installed fine on the box.
>>
>> Created a new VM.  Then loaded 32 bit WEENDOZE 7 on it.  That seems to 
>> almost work Ok.  I'm having a problem getting the VM instance to see 
>> other computers on my network.  Playing with it, I may have made things 
>> worse. Oh, well, that's what learning is all about.
>>
>> I have a newer system, with 32 bit WEENDOZE 7 that I use when I need to 
>> test TLS V1.2.  Other than that, I really don't like the newer versions. 
>>   Something about "old dog" and "new tricks" I guess.
>>
>> My current plan is to install WEENDOZE 7 64 bit on the newer system, and 
>> I think I'll need to get lots more memory, and more disk space.  Always 
>> wondered what someone would do with hundreds, or thousands, of GB of 
>> storage.  Now I know at least one reason.  A reason for more memory too.
>>
>> I'm figuring then I can create multiple VM instances, and build various 
>> OSs on them.  One problem with newer HW is that there are few if any 
>> drivers for WEENDOZE XP that the newer HW requires.  Now, perhaps, I'll 
>> be able to run older stuff on the newer HW, in VM instances.  Hmmm, is 
>> "instances" the correct name for the multiple VMs?  Maybe even MS-DOS? Or 
>> WEENDOZE 95?
>>
>> Same as VMS will be able to run on HW for which it has no drivers, huh?
>>
>> I'll toy around with the stuff for a bit, then set up the "real" VMs.
>>
>> A question, does anyone know if I can take an existing system and move it 
>> to a VM?  I'm guessing I can "export" stuff to another system.  But I 
>> might want to keep some older stuff without having to re-install everything.
>>
>> Another recent thing I've done is acquire a network based storage box, 
>> and set up two 500 GB disks in a RAID 1 array.  The thought is to keep 
>> just about all of "my" stuff on that box, and the "computers" will have 
>> just the OS and re-loadable apps.  The box has a USB port, and I do a 
>> weekly backup to a one TB USB disk.  Plenty of storage for me, for now.
>>
>> So, I can envision one storage box for all VM instances.  Sound reasonable?
>>
>> One problem, it's a bit like "work" and I don't like "work" anymore.
>>
> 
> FWIW...
> 
> I have Win10 64bit on my laptop. To be able to support and change
> two old VB6 applications (the VB6 dev environment has some issues on
> win10) I installed Virtual Box, created an instance, installed WinXP
> (directly from the original CD to the new VM instance) and then
> installed the VB6 IDE there. Worked just fine. All files are
> accessable from both the WinXP and Win10 environments.
> 

Well, the files within the VM container file are not accessable
directly from the Win10 host, but the VM has access to a couple of
shared folders where the application are stored. Just the usual
"connect to remote folder" from WinXP to Win10...



> The Win XP environment as such is just one single container file from
> the host, but the VM also has access to the hosts files, so the VB6
> application is stored in the Win10 file system even though the IDE is
> running in the WinXP VM. Easy to move the EXE to the target systems.
> 
> 
>