VMS and supported VAX hardware

[Sean Caron]

I ran OpenVMS V7.2 on a MicroVAX II (KA630) back when I was in high school
and it ran quite happily albeit very slowly with 16 MB RAM (and a SCSI
disk). Just text mode but I was able to use layered products like TCP/IP or
some of the compilers.

I've also run OpenVMS V7.2 on VAXstation 3100/30s _with_ DECwindows on GPX
graphics ... again very slow but runs pretty happily with the full
complement of 24 MB RAM in the machine.

I no longer have any VAXstation 2000s but I'd expect they'd do almost as
well as the KA630 ... being bounded by simply that, I don't think you can
put as much memory in the VAXstation 2000, as in the MicroVAX II. I find
OpenVMS runs very well just via netboot using MOP out of a VAXcluster ... I
wouldn't even bother to try to install OpenVMS on the local MFM disk in a
2000; just go boot one out of your cluster and see how it feels - I think
you'll find not as bad as you had originally thought! :O

Best,

Sean


On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 3:12 AM, Pontus Pihlgren <pontus at update.uu.se> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 03, 2015 at 11:49:28PM -0400, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote:
> > So yes, [Open]VMS 7.3 will run on a VAX-11 series VAX. And probably
> > even on a microVAX as well (though I haven't tried).
> >
>
> The follow up question then is, is there a reason to avoid 7.3 on lower
> end VAX
> models, say VAXstation 2000 or MicroVAX-II, both of which I have.
>
> I suppose disk space is the most pressing issue. What about memory
> consumption in
> a basic install?
>
> Or memory usage for options like TCP/IP or DECWindows.
>
> Thanks,
> Pontus
>