For anyone that cut their programming teeth in the 80's, the VAX was often the subject of a love/hate relationship. VAXen were everywhere, running either their 'native' Operating System, VAX-VMS, or a variant of Unix (BSD was developed on the VAX and DEC sold a variant that was called 'Ultrix' back then).
The VAX represented the beginning of the modern era for computing hardware: it had demand paged virtual memory; an instruction set that was mostly devoid of strange oddities; the first VAXen were of a size that most computing activities could be accomplished without too much hassle resulting from lack of resources; it had native support for modern style networking (Ethernet).
Its VMS Operating System was significant in that it supported networking (with DECNet), multiple processors (originally with the 11/782 dual CPU machine) and had built-in e-mail and instant messaging. HP (the eventual owners of DEC's assets) have a 'hobbyist' program that grants free of charge licenses to folks like ourselves that are interested in running VMS.
We wanted to recreate that 80's feel of using real VAX-VMS: primarily for fun but also to show how programming was done back in the day, before graphical windowing systems and editors that use 500Megs of memory. Sure, we could have run VMS in an emulator, but where's the fun in that ?
The VAXStation 4000/60 was one of the last real VAXen made (ours was born in 1993). By using a miniature VAX, we can get the feel of actual hardware but without the air conditioning and electrical power nightmare that a 'real' VAX such as an 11/780 would bring.
Our VAXStation is running VMS version 7.3 and supports telnet login over TCP/IP. However, we plan to hook up a VT320 terminal for a super-authentic programming experience. We have Pascal, Basic, Fortran and C installed. (But of course real VAX programmers write in assembler...)
The VAXStation came from eBay, as did the AUI to 10BaseT adaptor that it needs to connect to modern Ethernet. VAXen also require special magic CD drives, which again we were able to procure on eBay. Lastly the old 400Meg SCSI drive that came with it proved to have expired. We pulled an old 2G SGSI drive off the shelf and were moderately surprised that it worked perfectly and VMS ate it without complaint.
Dec/Compaq/HP's VMS Documentation Online
An excellent document by Phillip Wherry on installing VMS
Amazing but true: you can still buy the Sarah Base book on VAX Assembly Language Programming
Dec/Compaq/HP's VMS Hobbyist Program
©2004 Bozeman Pass Incorporated