[SunRescue] Am I the only guy here who like VMS?

[Gregory Leblanc]

On 26 Mar 2001 10:53:11 -0500, User Bobkeys BSD Bob the old greybeard BSD freak wrote:
> > All,
> > 
> > Lots of us here have (or have had) vaxen, including myself, and it seems
> > that most of you are running net-BSD on them. Am I the only guy here who
> > actually thinks VMS was pretty cool? Ok it's networking was irritating, but
> > in terns of file services, print services, directory services etc... I think
> > it did a pretty good job.
> 
> The problem with VMS is that when UNIX can grok cat, VMS requires
> 
>   fooisacalifragilisticexpalidocious gefritzenfrinkle widgefratzzenpoken
> 
> to do anything, if you are lucky.  My fingers can't take the
> gemittenfingerpoking that VMS requires, anymore.  Most of my
> VAXen came with VMS, but I run it up once, to see what is there,
> then put it out to pasture.  I hear the latest hobby VMS is better.
> 
> Someone mentioned that 250 buckeroo MicroVAX on ebay?  Wow.  Most
> of mine I get for the hauling, or for 3-5 bucks at the MooU surplus
> dumpster diving feeding frenzy.  That is the best way to find them.
> Folks around here just don't know what to do with them, so they sit
> or go for zilch.

I've not found a local store that sells them here, but I've got one that
the office purchased brand new 10+ years ago.  It's still doing
production work, but the official admin has been corrupted by NT, and
reboots it every year and a half.  It's getting retired this summer,
maybe I'll get to take it home. :-)

> > Am I just crazy here, or is it that no-one still has VMS OS tapes?
> 
> I have yet to run across VMS tapes, although someone around here must
> have had them, at one time.  I did find a couple backups one time,
> but no OS tapes.

I've got VMS 5.2 on tapes, but I'm not sure about anything older (might
have 4, most certainly I have 6).  Until I get NetBSD happy on some
machine so that I can put a webserver back online, I'm going to have a
hard time making images though.  :-(  

    Greg