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I used to work at an environmental law firm in downtown Manhattan and accounting and other core financial systems were running on a VAX OpenVMS mainframe, and t

by eggy 7y ago

I used to work at an environmental law firm in downtown Manhattan and accounting and other core financial systems were running on a VAX OpenVMS mainframe, and the document creation and storage was on PCs over a Token Ring, Banyan VINES network. The DOD was using VINES at the time. Memories of playing DOOM in 1994 downloaded from an FTP server somewhere while working the night shift to make backups on huge tape cartridges. The VAX system was pretty reliable and easy to deal with IIRC. A good thing from a hardware/help desk angle is that you didn't really need to troubleshoot terminals; they broke (keys or monitor) and required replacing. The mainframe was in the climate-controlled room, all in one place for any hardware servicing. I think Token Ring primarily was replaced because cheap, twisted-pair wiring made Ethernet less expensive. Token Ring had these twist-on bulky connectors. In a way we almost went there with Chromebooks basically being pared-down PCs and being served by a virtual mainframe, the cloud ("Spenser Confidential" movie "Give me the cloud scene" is hilarious).

tgflynn 7y ago
VAX's were minicomputers, not mainframes.
- m463 7y ago
  You're correct, although they did frequently have some of the hallmarks of "mainframes" like raised floors/cooling. It's amusing to look up "mainframe" on wikipedia and see what appears to be compact server racks. Shouldn't a mainframe take up a room, or even a whole floor?
- Zenst 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX_9000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX_9000 "The VAX 9000, code named Aridus or Aquarius, was a family of supercomputer and mainframe computers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) using processors implementing the VAX instruction set architecture (ISA)."
  - tgflynn 7y ago
    I never heard of that model. I suspect it probably wasn't very successful because DEC started to move to the Alpha architecture not many years later. I worked with a lot of VAXen back in the day but I never heard anyone refer to them as "mainframes".
    - Zenst 7y ago
      Aye, not common and for many will be a surprise as mention VAX and the DecVAX workstations and as you say, midrange setups spring to mind. I did some C work upon them late 80's and was very impressed and some profiling tool that was a whole new experience of joy. Will add, you could win a lot of proposition bets that Dec made a VAX supercomputer.
  - pinewurst 7y ago
    VAX 9000 was quickly superseded by the NVAX processor. It was Ken Olsen’s final failure at DEC to expend tremendous resources on an ECL mainframe only to have a single chip equivalent by the time it finally shipped.
Zenst 7y ago
I lived thru that era and in all that time, still managed to never encounter "Banyan VINES", and it was always some network driver that many knew of as What the heck is that crazy thing. To which somebody would say, oh some banks use it. Though encountering Token Ring at a company in early 2000, that was...interesting. Though dare say, that somewhere out there in the world, a token ring network still exists and is running even as I type. Legacy sure does have some strange corners when it comes to many walks of life.
hvs 7y ago
VMS's command line is... verbose. It has nice completion and is well documented, though. And you can see where the '/' style of parameters came from. e.g. DIR/SINCE="1-FEB-1994 17:00"
kbr2000 7y ago
Datapoint's ARCnet (token bus) similarly also had to make place for Ethernet [0], while initially less expensive. An interesting networking technology still used in industrial fieldbus applications (wind turbines & robots for example), its deterministic nature making it well-suited for realtime requirements. Flexible wiring topologies and good signal resilience too. It was used as a basis for Datapoint's minicomputer clustering technology (called ARCNET too, programmed using DATABUS), and later VAXcluster [1] as I just found out. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCNET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCNET [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_clusters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_clusters
rubatuga 7y ago
Link to the cloud scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GRPArTor7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GRPArTor7w

by eggy 7y ago

tgflynn 7y ago

VAX's were minicomputers, not mainframes.

m463 7y ago
You're correct, although they did frequently have some of the hallmarks of "mainframes" like raised floors/cooling. It's amusing to look up "mainframe" on wikipedia and see what appears to be compact server racks. Shouldn't a mainframe take up a room, or even a whole floor?
Zenst 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX_9000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX_9000 "The VAX 9000, code named Aridus or Aquarius, was a family of supercomputer and mainframe computers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) using processors implementing the VAX instruction set architecture (ISA)."
- tgflynn 7y ago
  I never heard of that model. I suspect it probably wasn't very successful because DEC started to move to the Alpha architecture not many years later. I worked with a lot of VAXen back in the day but I never heard anyone refer to them as "mainframes".
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Aye, not common and for many will be a surprise as mention VAX and the DecVAX workstations and as you say, midrange setups spring to mind. I did some C work upon them late 80's and was very impressed and some profiling tool that was a whole new experience of joy. Will add, you could win a lot of proposition bets that Dec made a VAX supercomputer.
- pinewurst 7y ago
  VAX 9000 was quickly superseded by the NVAX processor. It was Ken Olsen’s final failure at DEC to expend tremendous resources on an ECL mainframe only to have a single chip equivalent by the time it finally shipped.

Zenst 7y ago

I lived thru that era and in all that time, still managed to never encounter "Banyan VINES", and it was always some network driver that many knew of as What the heck is that crazy thing. To which somebody would say, oh some banks use it. Though encountering Token Ring at a company in early 2000, that was...interesting. Though dare say, that somewhere out there in the world, a token ring network still exists and is running even as I type. Legacy sure does have some strange corners when it comes to many walks of life.

hvs 7y ago

VMS's command line is... verbose. It has nice completion and is well documented, though. And you can see where the '/' style of parameters came from. e.g. DIR/SINCE="1-FEB-1994 17:00"

kbr2000 7y ago

Datapoint's ARCnet (token bus) similarly also had to make place for Ethernet [0], while initially less expensive. An interesting networking technology still used in industrial fieldbus applications (wind turbines & robots for example), its deterministic nature making it well-suited for realtime requirements. Flexible wiring topologies and good signal resilience too. It was used as a basis for Datapoint's minicomputer clustering technology (called ARCNET too, programmed using DATABUS), and later VAXcluster [1] as I just found out. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCNET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCNET [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_clusters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_clusters

rubatuga 7y ago

Link to the cloud scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GRPArTor7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GRPArTor7w