[Info-vax] Alternative _legal_ operating systems for VAX ?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/2/2022 1:36 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-01-02 16:11, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 1/2/2022 3:39 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> Before deleting my simh instances, I thought I would look for
>>> other operating systems which ran on VAX and try them out.
>>>
>>> The only current one I have found is NetBSD (which certainly has
>>> a _very_ retro 1980s Unix feel to it. :-)).
>>>
>>> OpenBSD dropped VAX as an architecture a number of years ago.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know of any other operating systems (including any
>>> experimental ones) for VAX that are still legal to run under simh ?
>>>
>>> If so, do you have any links to them ?
>>
>> Wikipedia lists BSD 4.3, NetBSD, OpenBSD and something called Xinu
>> as open source options for VAX.
> 
> As far as I know Mt. Xinu (read it backwards? ;-) ) wasn't free. I ran 
> it on an 8650 for a while. I think I still know where the manuals are, 
> but I'm unsure if I know where the tapes are...

https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/xlicense.html

>> NetBSD may be the only one with current support. But do you need to run
>> a current version??
>>
>> You did not run a current VMS version on it.
>>
>> And resource wise it may be a better fit for an older OS
>> anyway.
> 
> That is definitely true. It's not that pleasant to run current NetBSD on 
> any VAX at the moment. But there are also some problems/issues that 
> we're waiting for a new version of gcc to come along, where they have 
> been fixed.
> 
>> Alternatively you could take up the Linux VAX port. Some
>> work was done many years ago and I believe they got pretty
>> far.
> 
> I think it booted to single user mode. Not sure it got much further. Not 
> sure anyone would even want to try and pick that up, as Linux is 
> constantly changing under the hood, making it a big task to resume 
> something abandoned years ago.

Remember that Simon believes using C makes porting easy.

Great opportunity to demonstrate.

:-)

Arne