Setting up a VMS system

[Bill Degnan]

Find a working vms system and back up the drives to your
externally-attached drive (s) to clone them.  Migrate the cloned drives to
your system.  This is a simplified statement of what's really involved but
if you can get to a similar system to your dec whatever you have, I'd
attempt the clone process.  That is if you have/want to use real  vax/alpha
hardware.
Bill

On Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 9:05 AM Antonio Carlini via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On 22/09/2021 13:21, Philip Pemberton via cctalk wrote:
> > Hopefully a few of the DEC/VMS fans here might be able to help!
> >
> > I'm on a bit of a quest. I've been given some old VAX/VMS software --
> > a cross compiler and some source code -- that I'd like to get running.
> > My goal is to get the source code building and experiment with the
> > compiler a bit.
> >
> > Problem is that I've never used VMS before, and don't have a clue how
> > to install or use it.
>
> One of the other replies supplies a "how to install from scratch in
> SIMH" link, so that would be a good starting point.
>
> Might be faster to install on a speedy machine though (I've never tried
> on any Pi but I doubt that any of them will match a Ryzen ...)
>
>
> > Can any point me to an idiot's guide to VMS, how to set it up and make
> > it possible to send files to it from my Linux box?
> >
> The easiest way to transfer that I can think of would be to set up
> TCP/IP on OpenVMS and then just FTP (or NFS if you you set that up).
>
> There is (or at least, was) a version of SAMBA for OpenVMS, so that's
> another way if you like Windows.
>
>
> > I'm thinking of using SIMH, unless there's a better emulator available.
>
> SIMH works really well. Well enough that if you give OpenVMS (VAX) a
> sufficiently large disk (30GB should do), it will crash when trying to
> mount it :-)
>
>
> >
> > I'm still waiting on a reply from HP with a hobbyist licence PAK (I've
> > filled out the form), but I figure I can get started on the learning
> > while I wait.
> >
> You'll be a wizard before you stop waiting. Hobbyist PAKs are no longer
> available. I forget whether the existing PAKs run out at the end of 2021
> or 2022.
>
> VSI are not allowed to issue PAKs for VAX (I'm not sure whether they
> simply cannot do it or are not allowed to do it, but either way, they
> won't).
>
>
> Antonio
>
>
> --
> Antonio Carlini
> antonio at acarlini.com
>
>