Search for a copy of "VAX VMS Internals and Data Structures". I have the version 4.4 book, but it appears later editions are available at Amazon and online as p

Search for a copy of "VAX VMS Internals and Data Structures". I have the version 4.4 book, but it appears later editions are available at Amazon and online as pdf. This is pretty dense reading and really goes into detail on the design and rationale for the design. I'd say it's a whole CS education in one volume. DEC had some pretty clever people and it shows in this book. You might find some more historical information at https://williambader.com/museum/vax/vaxhistory.html https://williambader.com/museum/vax/vaxhistory.html for VMS or for RSX-11 and PDP-11 here https://williambader.com/museum/vax/pdphistory.html https://williambader.com/museum/vax/pdphistory.html. Wikipedia has a good article on RSX-11 too. Apparently you can even legally run RSX-11M on a simulator. Check http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ and http://rsx11m.com/ http://rsx11m.com/. I loved PDP-11s, particularly to write assembly, they were elegant. But it was always a struggle to fit a larger application into a 16 bit address space. I'd be tempted to try the simulator, but my current hobby computing is doing embedded firmaware on the STM8 which satisfies my desire to puzzle solve fitting a lot of function into too small resources.