Comment by kristopolous
12 hours ago
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!
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!
There was no 11/380 but there was an 11/780.
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...
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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.
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
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.
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"
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.
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
CP/M was created by Digital Research, a completely different company. There is no direct relation to DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.)
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check out decuserve.org for more vms