HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing

[Guy Sotomayor]

Am I forgetting, but isn't BSD (4.3/4.4 as I recall) on the VAX?  That
seems more suitable for running on classic hardware than moving to
something newer.

Of course I got rid of all of my 11/780 and 11/785 systems (along with
a smattering of VAXStations) years ago so I don't have any particular
interest here.  ;-)

TTFN - Guy

On Tue, 2020-03-10 at 16:44 +0100, Jan-Benedict Glaw via cctalk wrote:
> 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
>