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>DEC Number #2 in computing during the 80's, bought by Compaq, bought by HP and now almost unknown. How the mighty fall. Ken Olsen had a flair for being a bit
by nobody9999 2y ago
>DEC Number #2 in computing during the 80's, bought by Compaq, bought by HP and now almost unknown. How the mighty fall.
Ken Olsen had a flair for being a bit over the top -- which makes the following quite amusing given how things worked out:
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic is our
support for UNIX?
Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today,
much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language,
easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great
for somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between
different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we
support it. We have good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of
things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up
doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check
that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter what
you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you
look long enough it's there.
That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of
VMS is that it's all there.
-- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
Source: https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/toc_id/1-0-2/s/77 https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/to...
- vasco 2y agoDoes anyone know what the name of this old VMS documentation is? I'd like to have a search for it so I could see if I can find a copy. Specially if it's 5 feet of old technical docs, I collect this type of thing.
- nobody9999 2y ago>VAX/VMS documentation
- jasomill 2y agoGenerally speaking, "ProductName Version documentation set", where ProductName is one of "VAX/VMS", "VMS", or "OpenVMS", broken up into a variety of sets, subsets, and volumes. Taking VMS V5.5 as an example, for the complete set, you want the "Extended Set (with Base Set)", order number QA-001AA-GZ.5.5[1]. If I'm counting correctly, this set consists of 143 titles, which is probably closer to 25 feet than 5. Even if you go back as far as V1.5, the complete set still included around 50 titles[2] — I can't find a list for V1.0 — and unlike the V5.5 set, this one wasn't available on CD-ROM. [1] http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/dec/vax/vms/5.5/AA-LA95D-TE_Overview_of_VMS_Documentation_V5.5_Nov1991.pdf#page=31 http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/dec/vax/vms... [2] http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/dec/vax/vms/1.5/VMS_1.5_Manuals.txt http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/dec/vax/vms...
- vasco 2y agoThank you so much!