[Info-vax] OpenVMS 9.2/x86 - OpenGL and Windows?

[Gary Sparkes]

On Saturday, April 8, 2023 at 4:40:06 PM UTC-4, fswo... at gmail.com wrote:
> Folks, 
> 
> 
> 
> While I am waiting for x86 community licenses from VMS software inc., does 
> OpenVMS for x86 support OpenGL or Vulkan for 3D animations/graphics and DEC 
> Windows? 
> 
> 
> 
> Tim

Woah boy, Vulkan is definitely a hard no-go - the "newest" supported graphics board would be along the lines of the ATI Radeon 7500, which was released in 2001.

OpenGL did exist in some incarnations, and could possibly work if built on x86_64 with the old drivers/support, but unfortunately in the current V9.2 and E9.2-1 releases, VSI did *not* build the SYS$LDR:SYS$GHDRIVER.EXE image, so even with an ATI Radeon 7500 or 7000, there's no support for those cards.... currently, anyway. They did function on Itanium and Alpha to provide a graphical terminal that you could run DECwindows on as a local interface using phsyically connected keyboard and mouse. 

SYS$LDR:SYS$GBDRIVER.EXE is also not present, so ELSA GLoria and PowerStorm cards aren't able to be supported/function either. Those are the only in-box drivers I recall that'd give you a working graphics system with the hope of OpenGL acceleration. Mind you - OpenGL from the late 90s/early 2000s. OpenGL 1.1 as of VMS 7.3, 8.3 had OpenGL 1.2

I note also that almost none of the OpenGL tools are built/provided in the E9.2-1 and V9.2 installs. So building existing OpenGL using software and utilizing it over remote X11 display would seem to be impossible currently, as well. All may not be lost, as I do recall HP at least doing some bugfixes and updates to OpenGL libraries and graphics support (no new cards) around the 2012-2013 timeframe. The GL directories under SYS$COMMON:DECW$INCLUDE are not present. 

If GHDRIVER or GBDRIVER were supported/provided, I suspect a PCIe to PCI bridge with the appropriate card would result in a functional system for DECwindows/X11 currently. 

I wonder if potentially open sourcing those, maybe even in just part - to provide some GPU support examples that worked on Alpha and Itanium for community expansion.... documentation on this area is very sparse to non-existant.... or just building them for side distribution, could be potentially possible.

The best hope, I fear, is that it's some VSI engineer's pet project, or some code gets released that people can tinker with.....