[Info-vax] Hard links on VMS ODS5 disks

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2023-07-27 kl. 14:46, skrev Johnny Billquist:
> On 2023-07-27 02:05, bill wrote:
>> On 7/26/2023 2:33 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:
> 
>>> Ha!  I still make a living programming in Macro-{10,20}, because certain 
>>> tools
>>> are written in it and nothing else will do.
>>>
>>
>> Wait a minute.  Are you saying you still make a living supporting 
>> SYSTEM-10 and SYSTEM-20 computers and not just hobbyist machines?
>>
>> Brings up  yet another question, I guess.
>>
>> I have always wondered why they created the VAX instead of continuing
>> development of the PDP-11. I mean, look what INTEL did taking the 8080
>> (or maybe even the 8008) all the way to x86-64.
> 
> You could argue that this is what DEC did. Except they eventually dropped 
> PDP-11 support in hardware and moved it to software emulation, and then 
> dropped it altogether. Which just suggest they didn't think there was 
> enough value to keep it around.

PDP-11 software that was run within the VAX hardware environment was
probably just moved to the VAX/VMS platform.

Software that needed the PDP-11 platform (maybe due to special
interfaces and I/O cards) probably stayed on real PDP-11 hardware.
I'm sure there was many real PDP-11 systems alive well after that
the PDP-11 emulation in VAX was removed.



> And doing explicitly as a compatibility mode allowed for a cleaner design 
> than what Intel did with the 8080.
> I assume you haven't missed all the cursing of that architecture.
> 
>> But now I have to wonder why they didn't just continue development of
>> the 10 and 20.
> 
> Do you really want to open up that wound again? :-D
> 
>    Johnny
>