[CentOS] Ken Olsen od DEC, 1927-2011

Wed Feb 9 18:38:23 UTC 2011

On Tuesday, February 08, 2011 08:21:38 pm Jay Leafey wrote:
> Much as I love Linux, I'd still prefer to be running VMS on an x86 
> desktop box!

1.) Get an OpenVMS hobbyist media kit and license for OpenVMS/VAX.
2.) Install simh from a third-party CentOS repository, or from source. 
   ( simh.trailing-edge.com )
3.) Install OpenVMS/VAX on the simulated MicroVAX simh provides.
4.) Activate your hobbyist license PAK.
5.) Enjoy VMS-ness. (see 
http://www.wherry.com/gadgets/retrocomputing/vax-simh.html for a little more)

Doing that here to re-learn VMS after all these years, since we have a large high-resolution scanner system that is currently using a VAXstation 4000 to drive, via CAMAC-over-SCSI and IEEE-488-over-RS-232, a 7,000 pound microdensitometer aka 'the Guide star Automatic Measuring MAchine' (GAMMA).  We're wanting to convert the VAX Fortran and IDL code to run on a CentOS box, possibly a recently donated 20-processor SGI Altix 3700, and possibly a smaller x86/x64_86 box, or even one of the many SPARC boxen I have around here...