Submitted by We missed this one when it was announced, but since there’s not much VMS news these days, I thought “better late than never.” Dying to get your hands on the upcoming OpenVMS 8.4? HP is inviting participants for the field test of the next version of OpenVMS. As a field test site, you have the opportunity of trying the latest version of OpenVMS early.
Alas alack! No such luck. I wish I had scoffed up a uVAX a long time ago when I had the chance. Best OS ever. EVER. I wish the MS NT/Windows engineers had found better ways to roll the VMS principles into their product (and enforce them), especially pertaining to the UI, and security.
I tinkered with OpenVMS 7.3 on emulated VAX using simh. I don’t think new versions of OpenVMS still support VAX, but if they do, you might want to give simh a try.
I’d like to… that would be fun! Thanks for the tip! I worked ON VAXes for decades, and actually worked IN OpenVMS for awhile (on the OS), which I still think was the pinnacle of my career.
Now… my brain is mush and the most fun I have with my code is writing clever comments. Well, and refactoring for simplicity.
Agreed, VMS is a better OS. But I am afraid they (HP) cannot make it free because of patents/copyrights or whatever legal issues.
All PC-OS’s look primitive in comparison to VMS, DCL was the most powerfull CLI I ever saw.
Oh yes! Entire programs were written in DCL. The VMS installation code was written in DCL. I worked on the interpreter (for security commands and parameters) and the interpreter code was pretty tight (all things considered).
Ah well. If some serious effort had been made to port it to PCs back in the day then maybe it would still be around today… Of course DEC would have charged $10,000,000 for a license. LOL!
OpenVMS 8.x is Itanium & AXP only.
For VAX (or Simh) VMS 7.3 is the highest version.
The hell with it. I’m still interrested in OpenVMS, but these greedy little bastards from HP don’t let you try it unless you pay them some ridiculous amount of money [I don’t even live in USA] in gold, subscription fee, etc.
OpenVMS will die anyway, unless FreeVMS or some other HUMAN-BEING-FRIENLY [as opposed to corporate-friendly] clone gets its way into the world to show some good technology. Technology held by corporations is a very bad idea.
How the hell they suppose to sell anything, or even interrest potential clients with their product, when they’re such a useless bag-of-crap? No wonder they can’t sell it to anyone.
Quite harshly put, but I agree with you. Might be interesting, but not interesting enough that I would actually pay money from this interest.
Hasn’t there been a free hobbyist license?
If it is still available: There are HP-Usergroups requiring no fee for membership and you can get a license for OpenVMS.
1. Buy hardware on Ebay (or watch usenet group comp.os.vms) for forsales.
2. Build a simh system (will run on just about anything), but only emulates a vax, and only to VMS 7.3.
Get pointers to software kits and licenses at http://www.openvmshobbyist.com
3. Sign up for an account at DecusServe or Deathrow.
http://www.openvmshobbyist.com – their system is running 8.3 on an Alpha)
or
http://deathrow.vistech.net (They have three nodes, are running 7.3, but have an itanium just waiting to be installed…