Anyone a VAX/VMS administrator in a former life?

[dory36]

Yeah, I was typing that and said "about 20% (maybe)of the old farts around here are going to be thinking "oh man, I remember that", adn the rest are going to be saying "KL20?  Tops?  Vax? WTF?!? These people stuck phone handsets into rubber cups?  And I thought *I* was a deviant...."

And some of us still use EMACS (but probably not the original TECO version...)

 

[bpp]

And some of us still use EMACS

Darn right. If it can't be done in emacs, it probably isn't worth doing. The only screen editor that doubles as an operating system.

Sure beats line-editing on VAX/VMS at 300 baud on a TI SilentWriter 700 (thermal paper terminal) with a sharp stick. Ain't the 20th Century great?

Then again, the original VT100s were so futuristic-looking in their day. Straight out of Star Wars, or 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or Rollerball.

Bpp

 

[riskadverse]

And some of us still use EMACS (but probably not the original TECO version...)

EMACS was a little too slick for me - I stuck with VI 

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

teco with the vtxx macros so you could use it as a full screen editor...0j$$ewfile$$

The **** that sticks in your head. :

 

[yelnad]

I'm only 31 and I know what they're talking about.

Crap - I just admitted what a geek I am.

 

[Nords]

The sad truth is, while my technical skills are respected, the real reason I get sent into emergency situations is because I've become a world class bullsh**er.  Maybe that's too harsh, since I really want to fix the problem, but it's the "social skills" that seem to sell me.

"A straight shooter with upper management potential."

Sorry to hear it, Laurence!

 

[laurence]

"A straight shooter with upper management potential."

Sorry to hear it, Laurence!

Everyone has a cross to bear!

 

[John Tuttle]

teco with the vtxx macros so you could use it as a full screen editor...0j$$ewfile$$

The **** that sticks in your head. :

Didn't imagine anybody here would have ever heard of teco! I still have the teco card and booklet. This week my wife and I were in an antique store and I found about 50 IBM punch cards for sale at $10.00. I have about 4000 of them.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Yep, that was the first stuff I did with a computer. Punching Basic Plus code on cards on an old ibm punch machine, feeding them into a very fancy new optical card reader and getting output from an LP11 line printer. The next year we got a couple of ASR/33 teletypes that had built in 10cps mechanical paper tape readers/punches. If you happened to be particularly nice to the guy who ran the old pdp-11, he'd unlock the door to it and let you use the optical paper tape reader. Pretty much essential as the 28k machine ran off of a pair of 5mb disk drives and there was no room for user stuff on the drives.

Man, is THIS the "uphill both ways, up to our knees in snow" of the computer business...

While open access to the HS computer gave me the 'in' to what I ended up doing all of my life, I wonder how all that stuff prepared your regular joe HS student for data processing considering that we were on the cusp of the personal computer era...

 

[Nords]

Man, is THIS the "uphill both ways, up to our knees in snow" of the computer business...

I'm looking forward to teaching my kid Baudot code...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Bridgitte Baudot?

 

[Nords]

Bridgitte Baudot?

Hey, the submarine force's communications systems used to live & die off her paper tapes. We'd buy hundreds of rolls of that stuff, and then have to shred it after we were done loading the machines (what the reader didn't already shred for us).

 

[gindie]

Laurence- How did the trip go?

 

[laurence]

It went really well, I just stood there with a print out of Unix to VMS command (actually, VMS seems more like DOS). They were running a microvax. It had a thinnet connection over to a windows machine, which then talked to the rest of the network.

It never gets old, every trip, when I go out, I'm greeted by nervous, sometimes even hostile people, and to watch them all end up being good friends by the end, it's a pretty good buzz. Made my boss, and my boss' boss look good, and I began to devise a 12 month plan with them so I could make this aspect of my job a little less "unofficial".

 

[donheff]

I'm only 31 and I know what they're talking about.

Crap - I just admitted what a geek I am.

OK, but did you use Gopher? How about Veronica or Archie? WAAS?

 

[donheff]

OK, but did you use Gopher? How about Veronica or Archie? WAAS?

WAASTHAT? --- Sorry about that - WAIS

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

actually, VMS seems more like DOS

Give yourself a nice whap on the back of the head and feel lucky that I'm over 500 miles away from you

 

[laurence]

Give yourself a nice whap on the back of the head and feel lucky that I'm over 500 miles away from you

I mean, DOS is obviously a failed, shabby, pretender to the elegant, intelligently command-line driven VMS :

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Thats better.

 

[Nords]

Give yourself a nice whap on the back of the head and feel lucky that I'm over 500 miles away from you

Are you implying that Bill Gates ripped off prior art to satisfy IBM's deadline-driven technical development?!

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Like QDOS, which was half ripped CP/M code?

How can you compare a real-time, multi-user, multi-tasking virtual memory operating system written by real New England engineers with a single task, single thread, crappily written and partially stolen piece of crud written by relatively damp Seattle coffee drinkers.

For crying out loud, the vax needed a PDP-11 to cold boot it. A pdp-11 could kick a dozen Altairs asses and not break a sweat.

One cannot compare a piece of art work that still runs a fair number of applications 20 years later with something that would fit on a single 360k floppy disk drive, with room to spare.

Shoot, I may make the drive. You staying up late tonight Laurence?

 

[laurence]

I'm sick, I couldn't put up much of a fight!

Hey, DOS stinks, FAT 16 stinks, I'm no Gates worshiper, I know how he switched A: for C: and called it good! But you must remember, my first real job had a windows 95 box on my desk, all about reference points.

 

[Nords]

How can you compare a real-time, multi-user, multi-tasking virtual memory operating system written by real New England engineers with a single task, single thread, crappily written and partially stolen piece of crud written by relatively damp Seattle coffee drinkers.

This reminds me of Steve Gibson, the guy who refuses to program in anything but assembly language...

 

[wabmester]

How can you compare a real-time, multi-user, multi-tasking virtual memory operating system written by real New England engineers with a single task, single thread, crappily written and partially stolen piece of crud written by relatively damp Seattle coffee drinkers.

You're right. You should really compare VMS to Unix, which came out something like 10 years earlier. I *hated* DEC's DCL compared to the elegantly simple Unix command line.

You be the judge.

ls /bin

or

DIR [U1:SYS$SYSTEM.BIN]*.*;*

(or something like that; I've thankfully forgotten the syntax.)

 

[bpp]

For crying out loud, the vax needed a PDP-11 to cold boot it.

Really? That's cool, I never knew that.

So each VAX had a mini-PDP-11 built in to boot it?
Was this just the 11/780, or did later versions have this too?

Bpp