
State of the OpenVMS Port to x86_64 [pdf] - knivek
https://vmssoftware.com/pdfs/State_of_Port_20160906.pdf
======
dmm
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.

~~~
laurentdc
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 :)

~~~
trentnelson
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.

~~~
krylon
On the upside, depending on where you live, you probably save a lot of money
on heating... ;-)

~~~
mtanski
Is there a EnergyGuide heating furnace efficiency score for the ES40?

~~~
lfowles
Resistance heating is pretty poor compared to heat pumps.

~~~
mtanski
That's the joke that I was trying to make.

~~~
krylon
I think I remember reading or overhearing that Intel's chips somewhere in the
Pentium 4 era were more efficient at converting electricity to heat than a
typical hotplate. (Ratio-wise, at least.)

------
laurentdc
As an old time OpenVMS user (on VAX DECstations first and on AlphaServer
later) I'm looking forward to this.

I doubt it will ever come even remotely close to a "mainstream" OS, but Alpha
to x86 is a much better migration path than Alpha to Itanium.

And yes, there are still many OpenVMS installs out there in the wild, from
airport logistics to assembly lines, so this _may_ make sense from a financial
standpoint (versus a complete software rewrite for Linux/AIX/whatever) -
provided they can market it well enough to the old users.

~~~
chx
Don't forget nuclear plants running PDP-11/VMS until 2050.
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/19/nuke_plants_to_keep_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/19/nuke_plants_to_keep_pdp11_until_2050/)

~~~
kjs3
VMS never ran on the PDP-11. That article is talking about 2 different things
(running PDP-11s and HPs stance on VMS).

~~~
SixSigma
Hard to find a comment by you not in oblivion but I'm trolling for nobody :

Former NSA staffer and famous whistleblower, William Binney, says the DNC hack
was not done by Russia but by US Intelligence.

[http://investmentwatchblog.com/nsa-whistleblower-says-dnc-
ha...](http://investmentwatchblog.com/nsa-whistleblower-says-dnc-hack-was-not-
done-by-russia-but-by-u-s-intelligence/)

------
SloopJon
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 recently.

If I'm understanding these slides correctly, AMD64 VMS would require
recompiling VAX, Alpha, and Itanium applications from source. I kind of see a
chicken-and-egg problem: application vendors won't port without demand, and
customers won't adopt without applications.

~~~
loph
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 with.

~~~
SloopJon
The roadmap on the same site shows a "dynamic binary translator for Alpha and
Itanium images" planned to be available with the general release ... in 2019!

[http://vmssoftware.com/pdfs/VSI_Roadmap_20160906.pdf](http://vmssoftware.com/pdfs/VSI_Roadmap_20160906.pdf)

------
strlen
For those itching to try, simh is capable of emulating a VAX and running
OpenVMS (or NetBSD/vax) on them. One can also get a hobbyist license and media
from HPE
[https://www.hpe.com/h41268/live/index_e.aspx?qid=24548](https://www.hpe.com/h41268/live/index_e.aspx?qid=24548),
[http://www.openvmshobbyist.com](http://www.openvmshobbyist.com)) and play
around with it.

It is really quite a fascinating OS (I've had it running under a MicroVAX
4000/60 for fun -- and yes, I can truly say fun!) and feels quite modern even
today.

------
epynonymous
long live DEC OpenVMS, it's really rare to see an article on hacker news about
OpenVMS, but it has happened before. long live DCL, ASTs. i started work in
2000, but was still able to play around with vax and alpha clusters, sometimes
if i recall correctly, a mix of vax and alpha nodes in the same cluster.
OpenVMS was such a stable operating system, by 2000, most of the good DEC
engineers had left already for companies like Microsoft (Dave Cutler, etc),
but that legacy code was still quite amazing. long live ZKO and DEC, i learned
a lot from that job, great to see this coming, but not sure if it's still
relevant these days with all my development on linux. could you imagine
running this port on aws, like some customer migrating to the cloud all their
legacy infrastructure? that would be such a niche market.

------
WallWextra
I do believe that MACRO in the slides refers to MACRO-11, a PDP assembler. Or
maybe MACRO-32, for VAX. In either case, they have been compiling this
"assembly" language for Alpha (and now I guess Itanium) since VMS has run on
that architecture.

~~~
ch_123
That would be MACRO-32, the VAX assembler/assembly language dialect. As a
considerable part of the VMS kernel is written in VAX assembly, they treat it
as a high level language and compile it to Alpha, IA64 and now x86-64.

Other parts of the kernel are written in C (newer code) and BLISS (older
code). See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS)

------
gwu78
[http://www.mcmanis.com/chuck/computers/vaxen/index.html](http://www.mcmanis.com/chuck/computers/vaxen/index.html)

------
pklausler
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.

~~~
sedachv
A lot of the old VAX installations are industrial control applications, the
device interfaces are exactly the things you want to keep. You can buy new
VAX-compatible machines with the old Digital I/O buses and cables today:
[http://logical-co.com/product/ba23123-m9405-module-
interconn...](http://logical-co.com/product/ba23123-m9405-module-interconnect-
kit/)

------
icedchai
I have OpenVMS running under the SIMH emulator... It takes me back to the late
80's / early 90's. Hobbyist licenses are available for people who want to
tinker. Fun stuff...

------
johnohara
Tip of the hat to Wendin, Inc. circa 1988.

$ show developer /user=steve_jones /source=linkedin
/url=[https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevejonesinwashington](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevejonesinwashington)

edit: corrected url

------
hsivonen
Interesting that they have a non-clang C front end. Did DEC have weird vendor-
specifoc extensions to C?

~~~
ch_123
Yes, see the appendices of
[http://h41361.www4.hpe.com/docs/base_doc/DOCUMENTATION/V40F_...](http://h41361.www4.hpe.com/docs/base_doc/DOCUMENTATION/V40F_PDF/AQTLTBTE.PDF)

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)

------
dekhn
ugh. i switched from vms to unix in '88 because the telnet in vms was crappy.
other than the wonderful help system, I never found VMS attractive.

~~~
gaius
VMScluster still blows away anything else. 20 years ago it was doing what you
can only now do with vMotion now... And being able to set a working set per
job... And a coherent story for cross-language libraries... I could go on. VMS
was a technological tour de force that has yet to be rivalled.

~~~
dekhn
What cluster features were in VMScluster that weren't also in TruCluster? To
me the interesting part of TruCluster was the shared filesystem and the
application failover. That said, I work for a company now that eschews that
kind of tight coupling, because it's expensive to scale the hardware.

------
youdontknowtho
Looking forward to it!

------
leandrod
Call me when they free it.

~~~
laurentdc
Why? Not everything is free and open source. In fact, most of the operating
systems used outside the "general-purpose" Linux realm are not (e.g. OS400,
z/OS, z/TPF, AIX, Solaris, NonStop, QNX, vxWorks... even Windows Server).

That said, if you're really interested, HP offers free hobbyist licenses for
non-commercial use of OpenVMS, with access to the OS and compilers and usable
on real hardware or SIMH.

~~~
auvi
Could you please send me the link where it says that I can get the hobbyist
license. I want to give it a try.

~~~
dboreham
I got licenses for my MicroVAXen some years ago. I haven't powered either of
them on in a long time though...

~~~
jim02672
FYI, hobbyist licenses expire after a year. You'll have to get new ones. Still
free.

