HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing

[Jan-Benedict Glaw]

On Tue, 2020-03-10 09:06:57 -0600, Warner Losh via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 3:48 AM Peter Corlett via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote
> > Linux has taken thirty years to get this far. It's arguable what
> > is "major" but to a rough approximation, there are no good open
> > source clones of other operating systems of similar complexity:
> > I'm aware of FreeDOS, AROS, EmuTOS and a few others, but they're
> > relatively simple.
> 
> Linux never was a thing on the VAX that was very good. It was too late in
> its life cycle to get enough love.

I quite apologize for that!

> Linux and/or NetBSD/vax would be a good choice, though, to implement the
> VAX's system calls and execute it's binaries. Though there were more
> concerted efforts to do this years ago, but I don't know what became of
> them. Google shows a smattering of efforts littered with broken links. :(

There was a vax-linux port started by others, and I cared for it for a
good number of years. My life changed a lot since then, I quite failed
(and failed hard!) to bring up the needed time to care for Linux, care
for GCC and Binutils, GNU libc and all those programs silently
expecting IEEE floating point support.

  I still have a good number of VAXen around, though all powered off
and in good storage. We're actually searching for a larger room to put
all the old iron in there, get them on cables (power, network and
serial) and eventually even restart on hacking them.

  Hacking VAXen was a great thing do to! ...at least for me. I learned
so much from doing so, about Linux, libc, their interface, about
Binutils and GCC. It really made me "fit" for paid business. But lets
face it: I'm in the fourties, have a family and a day still does only
have 24 hours.

  So... Once getting all my hardware into usable condition is settled,
I'd be quite willing to hand out serial and power access to them, for
whatever you'd like to do. (If it's not already too late.)

MfG, JBG

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