[kristopolous]

Finally got to log into a vms system! I was looking to do that over 20 years ago but never could find one.

Somehow I still remembered most of the shell syntax in a book I read about it probably in 2001. Don't ask me ... I don't know how either.

Got bored in about 10 minutes but still, another box checked off!

[fleeno]

I had access to a VMS system in my BBS days, and I had no idea it wasn't just some hard to use BBS software. When it clicked that it was a real operating system on a giant machine (I believe 11/380) it changed everything for me!

[Suzuran]

There was no 11/380 but there was an 11/780.

[ButlerianJihad]

Apparently, the only place the VAX 380 exists is in a writing sample by Pearson Education. Otherwise, there is no evidence of DEC ever producing something called "VAX 380".

https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/samplechapter/0/2/0/5...

[Suzuran]

It looks entirely made up because the procedure described is also entirely alien to me, and I had professional experience with both VMS and Ultrix when they were still supported by DEC. (And it's certainly not BSD...)

[fleeno]

I know I just made it up! I have an 11/23+ and I'm guessing I was thinking of that 3!

[Suzuran]

Could be. You could also have been thinking of the 11/730, which was a cost-reduced 11/750 and thus the second-slowest VAX model DEC ever sold.

The slowest would be the 11/725, which was a cost-reduced 11/730 that had a reduced clock speed and half of the bus slots filled with epoxy to limit expansion. The 11/725 was so slow that using it was an act of masochism; It was slower than your 11/23+.

Those models were pretty rare though. Even though they were cheaper than an 11/750 the performance drop from the 750 to the 730 was too severe to justify even the reduced cost. If that were all then maybe replacing PDP-11s being used in industrial applications might have saved it but the 730 was still too expensive versus the existing PDP-11 products, and the 725's limited expansion made it less attractive than those same PDP-11 products. The PDP-11 thus outlived both the 725 and the 730.

[icedchai]

I have a VMS system running under simh! I also have an actual AlphaServer (DS10) running OpenVMS but it's very loud so I don't turn it on often.

[mghackerlady]

the VMS shell had so many good ideas. If i ever write a shell, I'm including VMS style abbreviations. If there is any modern POSIX shell that implements such a feature, let me know, because if there isn't I have to write one

[kstrauser]

Not quite the same, but fish shell has programmable abbreviations. I type “tf<space>” and it expands that inline to “opentofu”. It use to say “terraform” before we upgraded; I didn’t even have to change the commands I type.

[mghackerlady]

fish isn't POSIX though, I'm guessing ZSH can probably do something similar but command completion just isn't the same as being shortening "mkdir test" to "mkd test"

[avhception]

I've only ever read about VMS in an historic context, like Wikipedia articles and blog posts. DEC and VMS are not well known. That's a shame, considering how much influence they had, especially on WinNT.

[mghackerlady]

I don't know about VMS specifically (more people will just know it as the thing the VAX runs), but DEC is very well known to anyone in the computer space.

The PDP series brought us Unix and GNU, and the VAX was the only mainframe capable of competing with IBM. DEC was the largest terminal manufacturer (they made the vt100 and vt220. if you've ever run a terminal emulator, chances are it's emulating one of those or a machine that did). They created CP/M (and by extension DOS). DEC is very well known

[icedchai]

CP/M was created by Digital Research, a completely different company. There is no direct relation to DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.)

[mghackerlady]

well nevermind

[icedchai]

Even without CP/M, DEC still had incredible influence! The first multi-user system I used was a VAX, back in the late 80's.

[mghackerlady]

Oh, I'm not in any way saying it didn't haha. Every other point still stands. Besides, even if it didn't directly influence DOS it did heavily influence another Microsoft operating system (NT)

[ratxue]

check out decuserve.org for more vms