[Info-vax] VAX VMS going forward

[David Goodwin]

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 10:55:41 PM UTC+12, Terry Kennedy wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 6:57:55 PM UTC-4, David Goodwin wrote:
> > Yep, and I really wish that wasn't the case. I very much wish companies would just release the source for discontinued products instead of lock them away where they can benefit no one until the copyrights eventually expire in a century or so.
> 
> The problem wit VAX/VMS is that it shares a lot of common code with still marketed/supported products like the Alpha, Itanium and x86 VMS platforms. While it is true that VAX/VMS went EoL/EoS at V7.3, there is a lot of stuff that hasn't been touched since then by the other VMS platforms. The situation is a little different from the other VMS platforms as VAX was it's own separate code base, while Alpha, Itanium and x86 are built from the same source files via conditional. This is probably because Alpha was the first port of VMS away from VAX and DEC took their time and had several stages of the Alpha port before feature parity was achieved and version numbers synchronized. Neither of the subsequent ports (Itanium, x86) had the luxury of the multi-year 'learning experience' that VAX -> Alpha had, and also once that first port was done, a lot of experience was gained that let the process happen faster and use a single code base for all platforms. 

Yeah, in this case the product itself isn't dead - an old version has just gone out of support as usually happens. I guess here it would be nice if HPE just put up non-expiring licenses for it somewhere (with a non-commerical requirement if they're scared of it competing with their non-existent sales) for people who want to play around with it still. That or waive the license transfer fees so anyone who can track down an old commercial license is free to use it for non-commercial use.

I'd say the same for Microsoft and their old software but second-hand retail copies of their stuff usually isn't hard to find for those who want it and they don't require any sort of special license transfer process.
 
> > I'd love to get my hands on a PDP-11 someday (I've got a set of 8" RT-11 disks and a few binders of documentation) but I've never managed to track one down in New Zealand.
> 
> Take a look at the PiDP-11, a kit that gives you a 2/3 scale PDP-11/70 with working lights and switches. The emulation is handled by a Raspberry Pi running a modified version of simh that knows how to interact with the physical front panel. https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11

I'd not seen that before! Perhaps I'll have to get one sometime. If I'm being realistic I guess if I did somehow track down a real PDP-11 I'm not sure where I'd put it or how to convince my wife to let me keep it!