On 15 July 2016 at 07:24, <ste...@malikoff.com> wrote: > As a comp sci student I loved using VMS on our 11/780s at Uni, from first > year through final year where we also had the use of a Gould PN6080 UNIX mini. > (Aside - the Gould had one good drive, one flaky. The OS and staff accounts > were on one, student accounts and /tmp on the other. Guess which :) > > On the teaching VAX, I vaguely recall one time just after the computing > department had a new version of the OS installed, I logged in and I typed > '&' (or something) on a line by itself and the DCL shell crashed and went > back to login. That got patched pretty quick. > > Another humorous thing was certain faculties such as Statistics or Economics > would hand out (apart from an account for each student) a common account that > was locked into a DCL menu of for instance stats applications, that had a > minimal quota and priveleges and anyone in the course could use to check > terminal availability and print or submit job completions and that sort of > thing. > > With these accounts it was possible to break out of the menu to the DCL shell, > and as it was an anonymous account do (from hazy memory) something along the > lines of EDIT/NOJOURNAL [SYS$SYSTEM]password.dat or something similar, > and presto although you couldn't edit it or even see it, it would be held open > and any attempt for anyone to log in anywhere would get some message that the > password file was locked by another user. I er saw it done by a friend :) > > Apart from that, students would write crazy long DCL scripts that would find > out whether their friends were logged in somewhere on campus, and that sort > of thing. No matter that it took ages to execute and used up our meagre > student account CPU-seconds quota and log us out! So we just logged in again > and > got another few CPU seconds. The messaging command (can't recall what it was - > phone?) was great and lots of fun to use. Of course geek guys would use it to > send messages to girls they could see at other terminals, offering to help! > > I recall using EDIT/EDT and really loved it, none of our student terminals > (Telerays?, Hazeltines, LSI, Wyse, any other cheap beaten-up terminals the Uni > owned) ever had the mysterious GOLD key though, and it wasn't till decades > later I > saw a real DEC keyboard with that key. I felt disappointed because it was > actually > just yellow and not really gold at all, not even painted. > > Other times I used to edit my comp sci and stats assignments in line mode on > the > DECwriter IIIs and Teletype 43s which most students avoided like the plague, > preferring to use EDT in full-screen mode on a glass terminal. Being > comfortable > with line mode editing was very convenient for me if I happened to arrive late > to a terminal room when assignments were nearly due. > > And now I have one of those cute little baby VAXen, the smallest VAX ever > made, a 4000 VLC from an eBay impulse purchase. I have not powered it up yet > but someday I will and am hoping it works and has VMS on it. It might even > jog a > few more fond memories (^_^)
Heh. Excellent little nostalgia trip there. My student experiences were similar. :) And yes, I too now have a VAXstation 4000vlc. 3 or 4 of 'em in fact. And I've not tried powering them on yet -- I will do when I get them over here from London. I just want 1 working one to keep and I'll eBay the others. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) • +420 702 829 053 (ČR)
