[Info-vax] For sale: VAXstation 4000/90 128MB Fully Working and Tested

[Dave Froble]

On 7/2/2022 10:08 AM, John Reagan wrote:
> On Thursday, June 30, 2022 at 9:58:17 AM UTC-4, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 6/29/2022 10:01 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>
>>> VSI is currently supporting VMS, and porting it to x86 ...
>>> VSI is currently (I hope John) supporting Basic ...
>>> The auditing firm is a bunch of crooks ...
>> There are some reasons for concerns:
>> - niche OS (VMS)
>> - niche language (VMS Basic)
>> - obsolete language (Macro-32)
>> - probably non-optimal persistence technology (RMS index-sequential
>> files aka NoSQL Key Value Store)
>> - the team getting close to retirement
>>
>> But it is not an urgent problem:
>> - all the software is supported and can be expected to be
>> supported for many years
>> - the team has not retired yet
>>
>> What you need is a roadmap showing a long term viable future.
>>
> OpenVMS has other niche languages as well.  Our Pascal full of extensions (many
> from the Extended Pascal standard but available nowhere else so they might as well
> be considered vendor-specific).  Some vendors have attempted to convert Pascal to
> C but it looks ugly (IMHO).
>
> Yes Dave, BASIC is still on the schedule.  As mentioned, BASIC exposed a missing piece
> of the G2L design and the solution is complex.  While my model has been "don't touch the
> frontends and make G2L look just like GEM", the best way out might involve changes to the
> BASIC frontend.

Thank you.  Not sure what it would entail to "touch the front end", but 
sometimes doing forbidden things can actually be helpful.

> I would never recommend BASIC inside the OS.  It is too heavily dependent on its RTL to
> implement certain language features.  I suppose you could limit the set of features to allow
> but that would be a big investment to isolate all of those.  However, there are not enough
> additional language features to make it a benefit.

It is a jack of all trades, and does that well.

> There was a study decades about about using Pascal inside of OpenVMS much like how
> EPASCAL is used inside of VAXELN.  Pascal lost even though it had much more type
> safety.  Although a distant project for a "virtual VAX" was written in VAX Pascal.  They weren't
> happy to find out VAX Pascal used the HALT instruction to signal run-time errors.
>
> As for retirement, I have no short term plans to retire.  What would I do?  Just sit around all
> day on comp.os.vms and complain?  ;)

John takes a vicious shot at Dave ...

> And I did send in my DNA to 23AndMe so my DNA has been sequenced and is on a computer
> somewhere.  All you need is to wait for the human 3d printer to be developed.  I've also looked
> into putting my head in a jar https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Heads_in_Jars
>

It is not your potential that matters, it's what you've done, what you are ..

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA  15486