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Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32

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William Pechter wrote:
> In article <PM0005245889FBE0A0@aca40f93.ipt.aol.com>,
> jmfbahciv  <See.above@aol.com> wrote:
>>Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>>>>Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>>> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>>>
>>>>>>Both were shit products.  VMS got better after the PDP-10 developers
>>>>>>got hired.
>>>>>
>>>>> While I agree that DECTape wasn't the brightest idea,
>>>>> your hatred of the VAX is personal; it was obviously a
>>>>> great product if you gauge by shipments, revenue and
>>>>> user testimonials.
>>>>
>>>>Can you see the difference between VMS and VAX?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Given that one didn't exist without the other (at least
>>> until the BSD port), no.
>>
>>Ah, I see.  You're a customer.  On my side of the biz,
>>they were two very different entities.
>>
>>/BAH
>
> There were differences between what LCG development was like and what the
> rest of DEC was like.  In the real world VAX wasn't VMS although VMS was
> VAX.
>
> As far as your view on VMS -- it was pretty distorted compared with the
views
> of customers in the field.  The major colleges and universities which used
> TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 weren't as pleased since the VAX was more a departmental
> box than a mainframe.  It wasn't designed to support thousands of users.

It's not distorted.  10 and 20 customers were told that VAX/VMS was going
to replace the PDP-10 business.  No choice in the matter.  That's what I,
and a lot of other people, especially including customers, objected to.
VAX/VMS was fine for a particular niche, but not a viable replacement for
the work that the PDP-10s did.  It was insane for Bell to insist that happen.

>
> Commercial customers seemed to like the OS for decentralized
> division and departmental data processing and smaller schools liked the ease
> of systems management and DCL.
>
> VMS 2.0 was pretty rough.  The utilities were often compatibility mode.
> MCR SYE anyone?
>
> I personally never installed less than 2.0.  The immediate update from 2.0
> to 2.2 was part of the install process when I was setting up 11/780s in
Field
> Service.  The tapes were shipped together with the system for checkout and
> diagnostics.
>
> VMS2.0 was a little bit better than just a 32 bit RSX11 -- but just a bit.
> It competed with MPE from HP and other minicomputer operating systems
> including Unix.  I saw it lose to HP occasionally and Unix more often,
> but I'm located in New Jersey.  My home turf was heavily loaded with
> ex-IBM and ex-Unix types. PDP10 types were concentrated at the
> Universities, Johnson and Johnson and AT&T in this state.  8-)

Yup.

> I think they may have
>
> By the time 3.x rolled around in Mid '82 it was a lot better.
> I arrived at DEC in 2/81 so I installed both V2, V3 and V4 up through
> 4.2 when I was there.
>
> By the 8650 VMS was moving up in the corporate hierarchy since the 11/780
was
> way too undersized by the mid to late 80's.  The 11/785 was far from
adequate
> and the 8600 was expensive and DEC was losing customers to various Unix
> vendors who were doing multiprocessor systems.  Pyramid, Sequent and others
> were nibbling away at DEC's Unix and VMS scientific customers since they
> often sold Fortran compilers which could run the dusty old decks of
> DEC Fortran sources unmodified.
>
> In PDP11 and VAX land VAX was mostly VMS but there were DEC sold,
> supported and maintained Unix versions used by REAL CUSTOMERS and
> fully supported by DEC.  Ultrix, V7M11 (later Ultrix-11) existed and
> we had plenty of folks who saw DEC supported Unix with DEC quality errorlogs
> and DEC Maintenance.  There were users of the VAX that wanted things other
> than a PDP10 replacement.  The VAX was not, in the mid 80', a real PDP10
> replacement candidate until the clusters and RA drives allowed for
> VAXclusters to take up the load the PDP10's could handle.
>
> Ultrix was available and in customer hands in June 1984.  It mixed
> functionality from 4.x BSD and System V.  Users of DEC hardware could pick
> from BSD releases, AT&T System V (up through SysVRel2 on the PDP and up
> through SystemV rel3 on VAX).  I believe AT&T dropped the VAX when they
> started selling SVR3.2 on their own 3B systems commercially, but they
> probably had SVR4 internally on some of their 86xx machines.
>
> DEC at this time joined up with others including IBM to work on a
non-AT&T/Sun
> Unix look-alike OSF/1 which was their response to AT&T joining up with Sun
> to create what later became Unix International's SVR4.2.

Originally, OSF/1 was not supposed to be yet another Unix.  JMF was part
of the original design group and got extrememly despressed when he
firgured out that the politics had determined that it would be another unix.
The original goal was to design an OS which had the strengths of all
the OSes and avoid the problems of those same OSes.

>
> HP was a member of both groups -- the OSF/1 and SVR4 group... and they
> decided to go with a mixed Unix with both SystemV and BSD features instead
> of dropping all of HP-UX and branding an SVR4 version as their Unix.
>
> One company who was putting mini-supers into that environment was Alliant...
> They targeted that scientific market with their FX/8 and FX/80 boxes.
> Unfortunately, they went under in 1992 and Craig Mundie went off to go
> to Microsoft.

/BAH

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[CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-11-08 13:49 +0000
  Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-11-09 09:22 +0300
    Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2015-11-09 09:22 +0200
      Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-11-09 11:10 +0000
        Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2015-11-09 12:07 +0000
      Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-09 12:08 +0100
        Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-09 14:13 +0000
          Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-11-09 14:23 +0000
            Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-10 14:22 +0000
              Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-10 18:18 +0100
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2015-11-10 18:25 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-11-10 19:35 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "John Jackson" <jj@nospam.com> - 2015-11-11 06:47 +1100
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-11-10 21:15 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "John Jackson" <jj@nospam.com> - 2015-11-11 12:15 +1100
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-11-11 10:19 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2015-11-11 06:23 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2015-11-10 19:51 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-11 00:31 +0100
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2015-11-11 08:01 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-11 12:23 +0100
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 pechter@pechter.dyndns.org (William Pechter) - 2015-11-12 03:27 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2015-11-12 13:23 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-11 14:39 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-11-12 05:51 +1100
              Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-11-11 06:28 +1100
          Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-11-09 16:24 +0000
            Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-10 14:22 +0000
              Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-10 16:01 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-10 18:20 +0100
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-10 18:49 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-11 14:39 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-11 16:31 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-11-11 18:05 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-11 18:20 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-11-11 23:24 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-12 14:04 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 pechter@pechter.dyndns.org (William Pechter) - 2015-11-12 14:47 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-13 13:58 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-13 15:44 +0100
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-14 13:56 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "John Jackson" <jj@nospam.com> - 2015-11-15 04:44 +1100
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2015-11-14 10:15 -0800
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2015-11-14 10:53 -0800
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-16 14:47 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-12 15:26 +0000
              Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-10 17:52 +0100
          Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-09 20:17 +0100
          Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 hankvc@blackhole.lostwells.org (Hank) - 2015-11-10 02:21 +0000
            Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-10 14:22 +0000
      Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-09 14:13 +0000
        Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-11-10 05:31 +1100
          Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-10 14:22 +0000
            Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-10 18:05 +0100
              Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2015-11-11 10:52 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2015-11-11 11:40 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2015-11-11 14:01 +0000
            Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-11-11 06:25 +1100
              Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Johnny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2015-11-10 23:19 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "Sam Thatch" <st342@gmail.com> - 2015-11-11 12:23 +1100
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2015-11-11 07:34 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Johnny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2015-11-11 17:24 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-11-11 17:33 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2015-11-11 09:51 +0000
            Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 pechter@pechter.dyndns.org (William Pechter) - 2015-11-12 03:17 +0000
              Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-12 14:04 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Nyssa <Nyssa@flawlesslogic.com> - 2015-11-12 12:24 -0500
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2015-11-12 17:45 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-13 13:58 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-11-13 15:51 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Nyssa <Nyssa@flawlesslogic.com> - 2015-11-13 14:51 -0500
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 pechter@pechter.dyndns.org (William Pechter) - 2015-11-15 16:44 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@btinternet.com> - 2015-11-13 18:11 +0000
                Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-11-13 12:37 +1100
      Re: [CM] Coding with dad on the Dragon 32 Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2015-11-11 18:32 +0100

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