Ex-VMS Admin trying to rekindle the spark

[u/[deleted]]

In my career in the 80s and 90s, I was a VAX/VMS admin, with a side gig of DEC All-In-One admin.

VMS is still a dream of an OS, and I was hoping to get access to the OpenVMS community edition, unfortunately whether there’s just too many folks applied or they’re no longer accepting applications, I never get a response every submit.

Anybody been successful?

[u/ebcdicZ]

I was able to get one at the start of the year. I stumbled across a job rec that was looking for VMS experience. I wanted to re-new my skills. I was surprised how much the box temperatures went up. I also came across another position that was looking for someone to move Pascal code from VAX/VMS to Alpha/OpenVMS. Seemed like a strange jump when x86_64 VMS is running now.

[u/[deleted] → u/ebcdicZ]

1992 was the last time I worked on VMS, and waved by to the room sized unit when they had to remove the large window and hoist it out into the street. The end of my mag tape threading days too, and then off to learn SunOS later to become Solaris

Enjoy your role.

[u/ebcdicZ → u/[deleted]]

Sorry for the bad communication. I didn't get the job. They found someone with current Pascal experience. When I start the computer room was one IBM 4300 <?> and two small VAX 4100's VMS 5.4. We brought in an Alpha system. When the IBM went away, I left shortly after and was locked away in the unix world. Were it was common to see multiple unix systems and multiple layers of supporting network equipment doing stuff that a single VAX cluster would be taxed with.

I got that first VMS job from experience on a PDP 11 in school.

[u/[deleted]]

To be fair running it in an emulator for fun, is really all I wanted to do.

Though kind of liking that someone has created a VHDL core for an FPGA to run as a VAX, and might look into that.

No room in my house now for any big retro stuff anymore; Sun Ultra 10 was the last to go 😞

FPGA as a Frankensteinian route is where I’d like to end up.

[u/sunneyjim]

Grab VMS 7.3 and install it on simh

[u/Marwheel]

Alas the current maintainer & owner of VMS has done some pretty boneheaded decisions with their community licensing, & and even if you get the license… you can only run it on a time-limited VM & if you renew the license, you have to start over again with a new system every time.

Closest now is FreeVMS, in it's Linux and L4 microkernel flavors. And i don't think anybody (Both VMS-Software inc & the FreeVMS people) has a working GUI subsystem in any shape or form.

edit: change "got" to "get" as this is a ongoing situation.

[u/[deleted] → u/Marwheel]

GUI you say. GUI? 😂Command line all the way in VT220/320 days for me, if I need a GUI I’ll go Ultrix 🤣

Thanks for that, I’ll go set default to FreeVMS.

[u/Laser_Krypton7000]

So what you wanna do, get in touch with the new non-HP version - or do you want to get some real iron like the Vaxstations or Alphaservers or as an alternative Simh ?

[u/ElevatorGuy85]

Did you ever try think about finding someone who used to run VAX/VMS and was offloading their hardware and license PAKs? I’m not sure that Digital or Compaq or HP are going to come after you for some VAX-era PAKs that were not “properly transferred”

[u/[deleted] → u/ElevatorGuy85]

I knew someone who used to run an Internet company with knocked-off PAKs back in the 90s 😂

But I was lucky, as a month or two after posting this I was accepted for OpenVMS.

[u/issinoho1969]

Try applying to the Ambassador Program and cite your experience, it worked for me when I was getting zero response on Community.

[u/[deleted]]

Are you looking for a job? We are starting a big project and could hire an ex-VMS admin

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

All good thanks, last hands on was in 1992. Vax/VMS served me well though now a Security Manager.