4 ms·
It runs on VAX, Alpha, and Itanium! Woo! Most people haven’t seen a VAX. I saw them at my university and they were used for various administrative tasks and re
by klodolph 7y ago
It runs on VAX, Alpha, and Itanium! Woo!
Most people haven’t seen a VAX. I saw them at my university and they were used for various administrative tasks and recordkeeping, but I never used them. I don’t know if they’re still there. The university only had a couple people who knew how to use them.
Generally you will see them hang around, powered on, for long periods of time running some software which has been working for years. You don’t mess with them because they work fine, and messing with a working system will more likely break it than anything else. Every once in a while, you’ll see a job posting for people with VMS experience but it’s tough, because everyone with VMS experience is retired.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20209869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20209869
Another company I worked at recently had a VAX, but it was part of the company’s museum!
- amyjess 7y agoEvery once in a while, I go on eBay, search for VAXstations, and fantasize about buying one. Maybe one day I'll actually pull the trigger. There's one for $650 now that says it's fully working and comes with a licensed copy of VAX/VMS. There are also a few in the $150-200 range but I don't know if they have an OS on them or not.
- phibz 7y agoI believe you can get a license from HP for non-commercial use for free. https://www.openvmshobbyist.com/faq.php https://www.openvmshobbyist.com/faq.php
- zargon 7y agoIt was 20 years ago that I bought my first VAXstation 3100 on eBay for under $100. Later got a VAXstation 4000 and an AlphaServer 2100. Got rid of them all during a period of downsizing. Along with some nice terminals and other DEC equipment. Kinda regret that now.
- vic-traill 7y agoIn the spirit of repurposing, there is the Vaxbar: http://toyvax.glendale.ca.us/~vance/vaxbar.html http://toyvax.glendale.ca.us/~vance/vaxbar.html A VAX 11/780, where the Boot switch operates a blender. And the guy doesn't even drink!
- floren 7y agoMy university had a VMS cluster (some VAX, some Alpha) available to the students at least until I graduated in 2010. Of course, nobody used it for web browsing or discussion forums any more, but it did provide the most reliable online interface to the class registration system. On registration day, it would be common to see over 200 simultaneous users on even the old VAX systems. We found that the web frontend fell over frequently, but once you were into the VAX, you were set. At one point, I personally acquired both a MicroVAX and an Alphastation and installed VMS on both. I found it a very boring system, in that it seemed like something you'd configure for a task and it would just do that task forever--I doubt the sysadmins at my school spent a lot of time maintaining the VMS cluster, but it kept on ticking for years!
- rjsw 7y agoI used to have a VAXstation 3100 on my desk. I was mostly porting software from VMS to Windows NT 3.5 but worked on optimizing the VMS version too.