Re: Another opportunity
- From: Stephen Hoffman <Hoff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 12:49:50 -0400
david20@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
In article <f4o6m9$hbt$03$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer@xxxxxx> writes:david20@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx schrieb:
Of course you can't just ftp the license.com since ftp is not yet working. Brilliant.
InfoServer works here.
Apart from systems which were designed to install via FTP (and which therefore
start up a restricted FTP process) is there any system which allows ftp access
during installation ? Even systems which install via ftp don't, as far as I am
aware, allow you to just ftp up a file in the middle of the installation.
The EFI console allows FTP before you've installed.
And while we're at "integration" of stuff which comes standard
on other platforms, Gfx is another sad story.
DIGITAL announced it was getting out of the workstation market.
My alphastation has a gfx card which isn't supported by VMS out
of the box.
Which graphics controller?
This appears to be another HP development since under COMPAQ and DEC VMS was well known for it's continued support for decades old hardware with the latest versions of the OS.
Old systems classically dropped off the support list.
That old systems carry through is as big a problem as a benefit; an installed base prevents you from making various changes. For instance, OpenVMS Alpha itself can't simply rebuild everything using byte-word, it has to conditionalize or avoid these constructs as folks are still using EV5 and prior.
So I'm left dead in the water with that box
(at least if I want to stay legal), even if I only want to run 2D X11.
Ah, BTW, Tru64 runs just fine on the same box, so at least
someone at DEC back then knew how to write the respective drivers.
Tru64 UNIX retired all DEC 3000 boxes and slews of controllers, which caused a minor uproar.
On the next box I tried, a PWS500,
VMS didn't like the CD-ROM (an IDE drive), so I had to plug
one of those rare 512-byte SCSI drives.
Which CD-ROM? Which Personal Workstation? (Some of these Personal Workstation boxes didn't have junk I/O capable of booting IDE disks. I've yet to meet identical IDE disks.)
There are Itanium boxes that would boot OpenVMS for US$500 on eBay. Add a real license for US$900 per core or a hobbyist license, and off you go.
Old gear goes away. That's the nature of the business. What you buy now is worthless junk in five years. Sometimes less.
Hardware peripherals depend upon the age of the box and what is supported in
hardware as well as in software. Some of the earlier PWS boxes couldn't boot
VMS from IDE CD drives.
Those boxes were never supported for OpenVMS, either. They sorta worked, and were not explicitly locked out. Directions on how to work around this got posted, too.
All-in-all, installation procedures, support of vendor's
own hardware as well as integration of standard components
just plain sucks, when compared with the competition.
Even good old Ultrix works better in that respect.
I'm not sure precisely why DEC didn't produce a good TCPIP stack earlier.But that dates back way into the late 1980s, so they had plenty of
They had their own networking system DECNET which was very widely used -
SPAN (Space Physics Analysis Network), HEPNET (high energy Physics Network),
ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) etc - but it still seems strange that they didn't produce a TCPIP stack for VMS. Then of course later they were convinced that the OSI protocols would replace TCPIP which probably contributed to a deemphasis on improving the UCX TCPIP stack.
time to improve and seamless integrate UCX. I mean, how long does
it take to implement such a thingy ? I don't think that's rocket science.
The "fun" for many years was that DIGITAL bet very heavily on OSI. And DIGITAL lost that bet, and ended up playing catch-up in the market.
IP is not rocket science, but it's certainly a large and never-ending empirical effort -- very little of IP actually works the way implied by the RFCs. And IP is perpetually moving forward, so you're always chasing and re-porting, or extending. Also the nature of the business.
I'm not sure what extra level of integration you are looking for.
I suspect Mr. Kraemer wants a generic IDE CD-ROM and to continue to use an ancient graphics widget on his existing Personal Workstation, while also looking to upgrade the older gear to current software. Certainly laudable goals. DIGITAL, Compaq and HP have sought to sell newer gear. Also laudable goals. Unfortunately, these two goals do appear to conflict. (Though thankfully for us hardware bottom-feeders and scanvengers, used Itanium gear is finally starting to appear on the used-equipment market, and the DS and ES-class AlphaServer series boxes are seeing continued price drops.)
--
www.HoffmanLabs.com
Services for OpenVMS
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