VAX/VMS good for anything???

[JavaMomma]

I am a computers science student & i am trying to think up a to topic for my term paper for English, thank god because we are computer science students its a computer related paper. Anyways next year we take a course on VAX Assembler, and dont laugh the text book we use is dated 1978. So what i was thinking was maybe doing a paper to see if this course is worth spending a semester on, doing research on it, then possibly giving a possible alternative, such as PC assmebler or something??

Anyways i know very little about VAX, we spent 2 weeks playing with our schools VAX/VMS server (same server used for assembler course). And personally from what i have seen, its pretty terrible compared to UNIX or Linux for the most part, maybe a couple things i thought, thats kinda neat...

Anyways I have done a little searching on the net but cant find much on it, so i was wondering anyone out there that uses it? or someone who knows anything about it? any info or links to info about it would be great, also i wouldnt mind opinions, if you think this would be a good project or not.

Thanks for any help at all guys

 

[bgovanlu]

JavaMomma -
There are not too many uses for the VAX/VMS systems anymore. There are, however, some legacy software packages that have not yet been rewritten for a UNIX environment(I've had to use them). I know as a student at Rochester Institute of Technology, that we are trying to phase out of the use of them on our campus. Slowly, admins have been moving basic functions to Alphas that mimic the VAXs so that the Alphas will be a part of the UNIX cluster when needed for capacity. At the same time, they are making our UNIX systems the default for all new students to use. It all comes down to the almighty dollar. $$$

- bgovanlu

 

[AndyHui]

I did some VAX assembler about 2 years ago.

It is a dinosaur....last year they changed the course to x86 assembler. The advantage of the VAX is that it is a very simple 32-bit architecture much like the 386...nothing fancy. Registers are easy to remember and work with....R0 to R12...not this EAX EBX stuff with Intel processors.

It was easy to learn because you could pseudo code in FORTRAN or PASCAL and then translate it directly into VAX assembler.

 

[nexus9]

I don't think they even make vax'es any more. Hell, how many people code in assembler? Not many. PC assembler might be useful for learning about the nitty-gritty details of x86 architecture. Seems like this course is a big waste of time and money.

-Nexus9

 

[CTR]

The VAX Macro Assembler has some nice features. I don't remember them all, but I DO recall those nice 32-bit registers (R0 to R12 like Andyhui said, then R13 thru R?? were Stack Pointer, etc) and plenty of programming shortcuts (hence, "Macro Assembler&quot.

The VMS system was one of the first systems to use "Virtual Memory" which allowed more users to access the system since there didn't have to be RAM dedicated for every session. The VMS would page to disk all the memory, including the data in the registers, in use by the user at the end of their timeslice, and page it back into RAM when their turn came again. This is quite common today, but it was cool in 1970's. I might be able to dig up my old text on the system, but don't count on it.

 

[Cerebus]

Well, from a users stand point, VMS can be quite entertaining. It has a lot of, uh, "undocumented features".

 

[JavaMomma]

thanks for the responses, BTW what is/was VAX used for? WebServers, wait there was no web back then, damn, so what was it used for?

 

[AndyHui]

It was basically a big server. The VAX is to the Digital Alpha what the P3XEON is to the Itanium.....although a lot more successful. It's a step down in generation, features and performance from the original Alpha processor.

 

[kranky]

VAX (Virtual Address eXtension, I think it was) was the hardware, VMS was the operating system. I liked VMS a lot because it was the first OS I really learned enough to be a good sysadmin.