41–50 of 58 posts
Interesting that they have a non-clang C front end. Did DEC have weird vendor-specifoc extensions to C?
The original VMS C compiler targeted a pre-ANSI "VAX C" dialect which had further differences. DEC C replaced it on the Alpha (I don't think it was backported to the VAX)
I have a bad habit where instead of doing something relevant I play with old stuff I read about but didn't have access to as a kid. VMS always interested me since I first read about it in the jargon file. I recently found an alphaserver on craigslist and I just requested an openvms hobbyist license so I could play with it. An octane running irix is another expression of this problem.
You would have liked Snakebite. ( http://web.archive.org/web/20121031190851/http://www.snakebi... )
Why not translate the PDP-11 or VAX binaries to x86-64 and emulate the memory-mapped device interfaces? Seems like less work, and more likely to produce a cheap solution for legacy installations worrying about how to run an ancient critical application on old gear.
I work with an old DEC guy who co-wrote a book about the BLISS compiler back in the day. He thought it made a much better "portable assembly language" than C. He also likes to talk about the binary compatibility on VMS; e.g., VAX binaries that run unchanged on Itanium. Unfortunately, that commitment to compatibility has wavered a bit since HP offshored VMS maintenance. We've had to work around some breaking changes r…
DEC had a tool called VEST which was used to take native VAX binaries and convert them to run on Alpha AXP. It was very cool technology. A fair amount of the system utilities for OpenVMS on AXP were VESTed VAX binaries. I'm pretty sure the EDT editor was one of these. The VEST technology could possibly be used to convert native VAX binaries to run on X86_64, I don't know for sure how the endian-ness would be dealt wi…
I have a bad habit where instead of doing something relevant I play with old stuff I read about but didn't have access to as a kid. VMS always interested me since I first read about it in the jargon file. I recently found an alphaserver on craigslist and I just requested an openvms hobbyist license so I could play with it. An octane running irix is another expression of this problem.
I dreamed of having a SGI after watching Jurassic Park as a child. I also remember my dad bringing me home a VHS of SIGGRAPH circa 1995 and dreaming about time on a SGI. Time to check Craigslist, I think. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing wrong with that, you simply suffer from retrocomputing. Careful about the power bill though. Large SGI stuff (e.g. Onyx) can go in the kilowatt range under load, and an AlphaServer idles at around 200W last time I checked. IT was no green back then :)
My ES40 (4 x 667MHz 21264s) consumes 16A @ 110V. Most 110V US circuits are 10A. I blew at least three fuses between that and the RX5670 (4 x Itanium), which consumed a similar amount of power @ 110V.
