[Info-vax] VMS internals design, was: Re: BASIC and AST routines

[Félim Doyle]

On Thursday, 25 November 2021 at 15:48:37 UTC, Dave Froble wrote:

> VMS was designed and implemented for VAX, not generic computers.

As I remember it, VAX/VMS was designed by DEC to be the ideal OS then the VAX hardware was designed and built to run it not the other way around. There were probably some mistakes made, unforeseen implementation issues and some during development of the harware and software but the facilities that this combination provided, especially in comparison to the price range of other systems, was 

It's not proprietary in the traditional sense but it is difficult to port to hardware that was not designed to run it. It is certainly worth tidying up the legacy flaws to make future ports easier but until somebody designs new hardware that can utilise / exploit the full functionality of OpenVMS any port will be difficult, incomplete and imperfect.