16 Jul
2016
16 Jul
'16
4:33 a.m.
On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Sean Conner wrote:
To be fair, I think you have to think about what was around when VMS
was developed, and what DEC was competing with. VMS is an
enterprise-grade operating system, designed for serious production work.
At the time VMS was conceived, Unix was a university product, used for
teaching and research, not for heavy production work. In fact those
early versions of Unix were completely useless for that kind of
application - too limited, unstable, and no useful security features. No
accounting at all, no useful batch functionality, nothing but the most
basic kind of security and protection functionality etc.
VMS was designed to compete with IBM mainframes and System/32-34-36 and
the likes.
In the early 80s I used both VMS version 4 and 5 and Unix version 7.
The Unix system was used for program development, the VMS system for
program development and running accounting software. The Unix system was
fine for program development in a lab but far too unstable and insecure
for running accounting systems in a corporate production environment.
What I've read about VMS makes me think the
networking was
incredible.
16 Jul
16 Jul
3:21 p.m.
jonas said:
VMS is an
enterprise-grade operating system, designed for serious production work.
At the time VMS was conceived, Unix was a university product, used for
teaching and research, not for heavy production work.
In the mid 80s our Uni teaching 11/780 running VMS would groan and creak
under the strain of 50 students logged on. I was told that over at Sydney
Uni, their 11/780s were running a very modded and tweaked Unix and could
have a hundred or more students logged in on the one machine. Whether it
was crashy or not, they got more bang-for-buck out of their VAXen.
4:19 p.m.
On 07/16/2016 03:21 PM, steven at malikoff.com wrote:
In the mid 80s our Uni teaching 11/780 running VMS
would groan and
creak under the strain of 50 students logged on. I was told that over
at Sydney Uni, their 11/780s were running a very modded and tweaked
Unix and could have a hundred or more students logged in on the one
machine. Whether it was crashy or not, they got more bang-for-buck
out of their VAXen.
I recall that BSD was a great match for our 11/750. Never did succeed
at getting HASP+bisync going on it though.
--Chuck
17 Jul
17 Jul
12:47 p.m.
On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 7:19 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
I recall that BSD was a great match for our 11/750.
Never did succeed
at getting HASP+bisync going on it though.
Oh? Which method/product were you trying? I used to do that every
day with our own boards. I had heard that some of our sales were due
to people getting frustrated with trying other solutions and buying
ours.
We definitely supported Ultrix + BSD (and Sys V) from the mid-80s. I
did the work to add 3780 on Unibus for Ultrix to our product line in
1989 because an existing customer needed something for that platform
(we only ever sold that one, but the sale paid for the development
with a little left over). Our largest Unibus machine was an 11/750
(though we had an VAX 8300 w/DWBUA, and an NMI-based VAX 8350 as our
largest machine, both purchased for supporting our VAXBI product
line). I kept the 8300 and the 11/750 when the company closed down.
Had to leave the 8350 behind.
By 1994, I was probably one of a handful of people on the planet still
doing HASP or 3780 from a VAX. By early 1995, out last customer
contract expired and nobody was left on support and we were 100% done.
There may have been a tiny number of sites still using it, but if
things broke, they never called.
-ethan
12:52 p.m.
On Sun, Jul 17, 2016 at 3:47 PM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
with a little left over). Our largest Unibus machine
was an 11/750
(though we had an VAX 8300 w/DWBUA, and an NMI-based VAX 8350 as our
largest machine, both purchased for supporting our VAXBI product
line). I kept the 8300 and the 11/750 when the company closed down.
Had to leave the 8350 behind.
Transposition typos... should be...
Our largest Unibus machine was an 11/750
(though we had an VAX 8300 w/DWBUA, and an NMI-based VAX 8530 as our
largest machine, both purchased for supporting our VAXBI product
line). I kept the 8300 and the 11/750 when the company closed down.
Had to leave the 8530 behind.
The 8300 is a single 42" rack with a BA32 (the size of an 11/730) and
a 42" rack for disks and the Unibux BA-11. The VAX 8530 was much
larger and 3-phase.
-ethan
16 Jul
16 Jul
4:46 p.m.
On 07/16/2016 15:21, steven at malikoff.com wrote:
In the mid 80s our Uni teaching 11/780 running VMS would groan and creak
under the strain of 50 students logged on. I was told that over at Sydney
Uni, their 11/780s were running a very modded and tweaked Unix and could
have a hundred or more students logged in on the one machine. Whether it
was crashy or not, they got more bang-for-buck out of their VAXen.
That's a tough example to generalize without knowing more about the
workloads involved. I've certainly heard many anecdotes where a given
model running VMS supported many more users than the same hardware
running Ultrix/4BSD, *and* vice versa.
But these examples can easily turn out to be skewed - having a ton of
users running ALL-IN-1, MAIL, or NOTES-11 doesn't compare well to users
compiling code, running SAS or SPSS, or doing database work. Substitute
rn/trn, Mail, cc/f77, ingres, etc as needed. ;)
--S.
9:06 p.m.
On Sun, 17 Jul 2016, steven at malikoff.com wrote:
In the mid 80s our Uni teaching 11/780 running VMS
would groan and creak
under the strain of 50 students logged on. I was told that over at Sydney
Uni, their 11/780s were running a very modded and tweaked Unix and could
have a hundred or more students logged in on the one machine. Whether it
was crashy or not, they got more bang-for-buck out of their VAXen.
You certainly got more bang when your disk crashed. I ran a VAX cluster
with 15 years with shadowed DSSI drives and never had a disk corruption, I
replaced members of shadow sets when they died but again I never had any
issues of corruption and data loss. Meanwhile I also lived with an array
of Ultrix boxes and SunOS boxes where I had to clean up disk corruptions
or do restores from tape onto new disks - usually in the middle of the
night. Your work is always done faster if you skip steps.
"System unstable, save often."
--
Richard Loken VE6BSV, Systems Programmer - VMS : "...underneath those
Athabasca University : tuques we wear, our
Athabasca, Alberta Canada : heads are naked!"
** rlloken at telus.net ** : - Arthur Black
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cclist＠sydex.com -
classiccmp＠crash.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
jonas＠otter.se -
rlloken＠telus.net -
steven＠malikoff.com