DEC RRD40 CD-Rom Drive caddy

[Brendan McNeill]

Greetings

The DEC RRD40 CD-ROM drive requires a DEC caddy to insert and remove CD’s from 
the drive.  Does anyone have a spare caddy they could sell/post to me?

Details of caddy in this document link below, however if you don’t know what it 
is you are probably unlikely to have one.

http://www.carelife.com/manuals/RDD40_Optical_Drive_Owner_Manual.PDF 


Many thanks
Brendan

--//
bren...@mcneill.co.nz
+64 21 881 883

RE: Reproduction micros

[Dave Wade]

> -Original Message-
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Sam
> O'nella
> Sent: 14 July 2016 06:44
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> 
> Subject: RE: Reproduction micros
> 
> I haven't built or marketed anything myself but i believe if i
> understood  correctly from several folks who have that vga was a cheaper
> choice due to licensing costs for dvi or hdmi at the time.

I didn't think there were licencing costs for DVI but apparently I am wrong. 
The connector is absolutely horrid.

> 
> Not sure if vga is past that point or open but when keeping home brew kits
> cheap for us hobbyists every dollar counts.
> 

As far as I know VGA has always been open. I can't see anything patentable in 
the spec, its really just RGB with higher sync rates.

> It would be interesting maybe as a Wikipedia page (thought there was one)
> to show which projects were out there and preferably which are still
> active.  A shrinking but understandable issue when buying  im batches with
> personal money in hopes that theyll sell eventually.

That would take some updating...

Dave

Re: DEC boards at recycler

[Noel Chiappa]

> From: Devin Davison

> I have a spare unibus chasis and am have been looking for a cpu card
> for a while.

Umm, those CPUs are all QBUS CPUs, not UNIBUS. Was your "unibus" a typo for
'QBUS'? If not, all those CPU boards are, alas, of no use to you.

> The memory boards M8067, real time clock M7856, and serial card M8043
> are of interest.

Likewise most of these boards are QBUS, the M7856 being the only UNIBUS one.

Noel

Re: Reproduction micros

[Peter Corlett]

On Thu, Jul 14, 2016 at 12:44:19AM -0500, Sam O'nella wrote:
> I haven't built or marketed anything myself but i believe if i understood
>  correctly from several folks who have that vga was a cheaper choice due to
> licensing costs for dvi or hdmi at the time. 

Parts of DVI are patented, but there are royalty-free licences available. It's
also fairly like that the patents have all bit expired, or are invalid. HDMI
can be treated as DVI with a different plug.

I doubt supporting either interface would be a problem on licensing grounds. If
nothing else, these things aren't made in high enough volume to attract the
attention of the attack lawyers.

> Not sure if vga is past that point or open but when keeping home brew kits
> cheap for us hobbyists every dollar counts.

This is the more likely reason: DVI and related standards use TMDS signalling
which requires a reasonably complex logic block running at a minimum of 250MHz
to scramble and multiplex the 24 bit RGB into the four output signals. This is
not impossible on low-end FPGAs, but it does eat enough LEs that the designer
may decide to just support VGA rather than cut back functionality elsewhere or
require a more expensive FPGA.

Doh! Oopsie in the subject line / was Re: CP/M code in DOS? Revisited...

[Evan Koblentz]

I have to laugh at myself.  I just realized that when I read the title of the email, 
I thought it had said CP/M code in DOS? Revisited..."  Sometimes I really think 
I'm dyslexic.  Maybe.  In love with computers, definitely.  I think I was born with 
food in one hand and computers in the other with Star Trek and Star Wars somewhere 
in the vicinity.  :)  Take care my friends.


Wow, I really (bleeped) that one! Subject line indeed should have been 
"CP/M code in DOS" not the opposite. Sorry.  :)

Re: Doh! Oopsie in the subject line / was Re: CP/M code in DOS? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Evan Koblentz wrote:
Wow, I really (bleeped) that one! Subject line indeed should have been "CP/M 
code in DOS" not the opposite. Sorry.  :)


Then my entire time travel hypothesis is for naught.

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Evan Koblentz]

will Bob Zeidman's talk be video recorded?


Yes. We're also thinking about a live stream. TBD.



If so, where is the video repository for past VCF seminars?


Most of the talks from VCF East are here:
https://www.youtube.com/c/VintageComputerFederation501c3

We have the raw footage from past VCF West shows + we need to get it online.

RE: Reproduction micros

[Swift Griggs]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2016, Brad H wrote:
> I think the Amiga project is neat, although personally I'm not sure I'd 
> find a need for one.

I have an Amiga 3000 (my personal favorite), but I have limited space so I 
can only have about two "classic" systems set up at once (and those are 
usually SGI machines in the retro-spots-of-active-honor). I'm not one of 
those types who has a personal warehouse with loads of old gear stacked on 
huge shelves. So, I find that I spend a lot more time with a MIST FPGA 
Amiga than my real 3000. The main reason being that since it can use VGA + 
USB, it's small, and it's super easy to put on a KVM make it attractive in 
my case. Plus it can emulate so many micros, I get more time with them. 

> The thing about the Amiga was its wow factor

I totally agree. I'm not a huge fan of Workbench, but the Amiga hardware 
and the way folks exploited it in games, demos, and applications was the 
thing that impressed me. All those custom chips doing interesting things 
(music and graphics - there was no bean-counting-co-processor thankfully) 
while at the time my impression of PeeCees was that they just bottleneck'd 
everything through one pathetically slow CPU with brain-damaged memory 
management and then wanted to brag in a dull magazine about mind-numbing 
things like how fast you could get a spreadsheet done or reconcile 
accounts payable for your boss... ie, ral inspiring stuff to a 14 year 
old (*yawn*). I see things a bit differently, now, (I actually think DOS 
and x86 is cooler now than I did back in the day) but that's how I felt as 
a teen.

Of course the x86 today just feels like it's so complex that the actual 
microcode you "get" to access & play with isn't really reflecting what's 
going on inside. It's just some shared fiction while the CPU really does 
super-complex optimizations way beyond what any one person can really 
understand anymore. It's also why I haven't curiously disassembled any C 
code in probably a decade. I realized the compiler could always do a 
better job and use instructions or features I didn't even know existed.  
Perhaps, I think that way because I'm not a specialized EE staring at chip 
lithography all day. However, others have made the point more elegantly 
before on the list.

> I remember walking into Compucentre (Canadian chain) in the mid-80s.. 
> and there's all the computers from 8 bit heaven and their 16 color 
> graphics (if you were lucky).. and then there's this one computer on a 
> pedestal featuring a totally real jungle cat prowling onscreen.  It just 
> blew the doors off everything else there [...]

I had nearly the same experience at a chain here in the states called 
"Electronics Boutique". They'd have a couple of PeeCees running demos and 
facing out the storefront. Your eyes would always been drawn to the Amiga 
running a Dragon's Lair or Space Ace demo (or something else awesome). I 
remember being in the store talking to the staff and people walking in to 
get a PeeCee and walking out with an Amiga because the kids were so 
impressed with the games and graphics etc...

Also, I've heard versions of this same story from at least three other 
people. It seems to be a very common experience. It definitely whet my 
appetite for Amigas, too. However, at the time $$$ was a big problem for 
me and my family. So, it really wasn't until they were started to become 
quite obsolete that I finally got to own one. By that time, I was into 
UNIX and so it was already just a "retro curiosity" but one I still enjoy.

I do wish I'd got the chance to use Amigas to do something "real" when 
they were state of the art. That or I wish I'd had an A500 the day they 
hit the shelves and had all the cool games. I'm sure that would have been 
a lot of fun.

-Swift

Re: DEC boards at recycler

[Ethan Dicks]

On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 5:56 PM, Jules Richardson
 wrote:
> I found various DEC (Qbus?) boards at my local tame recycler earlier.

Neat!  I used to have a friendly scrapper for a friend - got a BA23
from him, and some VAXBI boards (because  was quite happy to pay him
well over the gold value) - but that was coming up on 20 years ago.

> Also several Emulex boards which didn't
> contain anything that was obviously a part number (from memory a couple that
> were "full width" and three that were "half width") - I'm guessing they're
> probably tape controllers, but they might be hard disk.

Emulex made a lot of disk and tape and serial comms interfaces.   If
they are dual-width, they are Qbus for sure.  If they are quad-width,
they could be Qbus or Unibus, though in my experience, Unibus Emulex
cards are hex-width, taking advantage of the board space to load up
features/port count.

Thinking back to the Emulex CS/21 16-port serial card, it has a pair
of 50-pin connectors, but the array of 40-pin DIP UARTs and the
cluster of EIA line drivers by the connectors means it's fairly easy
to see it's a serial card.  I don't know if Emulex ever did Qbus
serial cards, so a dual or quad-height card with one or two 50-pin
connectors is more likely to be SCSI, disk or tape or both, than
serial, so all I'd advise there is looking for tell-tale signs of an
actual board name/number or the characteristic parts associated with
SCSI vs EIA serial.

They also made ESDI and SMD interfaces, but the pin count there is a
dead giveaway.

-ethan

Re: NuTek Mac comes

[Liam Proven]

On 13 July 2016 at 07:39, Chris Hanson  wrote:
> (How do you think it was possible for there to be multiple OS releases for 
> the Mac after the first Mac 128 shipped? They didn’t tell people to crack 
> open their systems and install new ROMs…)


Apple didn't, no. But Commodore, Atari and Acorn did. :-)

-- 
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)

Re: NuTek Mac comes

[Liam Proven]

On 12 July 2016 at 20:06, Swift Griggs  wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
>> I vaguely recall seeing some in a mag at the time. It looked a bit like
>> Mac apps running on CDE, if I remember correctly. The in-window menus
>> were weird (for a Mac) and made it look more Windows-like.
>
> That's about what I'd expect. I wonder if it could crash as much as OS 8.1
> on my Quadra 700. That's a tough act to follow. :-)

That was one of the things people didn't talk about in the classic
days. I supported classic MacOS Macs up until the early noughties.
They were horribly unstable. I embraced OS X early on, but some people
hung on as long as possible, and others disliked OS X so much they
switched to Windows.

All the now-nostalgicized-over '80s OSes were pretty horribly
unstable: Windows 3.x, and indeed 9x; Amiga OS; ST GEM; Acorn RISC OS.
None had proper memory protection, few had preemptive multitasking or
didn't do it well.

It's why I switched to Windows NT 3.1 back in '93 and liked it. I did
actually used to like Windows, an NT was a proper, solid, grown
-up OS. In my experience, more stable than OS/2 >=2.

> IIRC, there was an alpha-quality liveCD for a while.

Exactly.

> I never could get
> that excited about NeXT, Objective C, or any of that Steve-Jobs-in-limbo
> kruft (and by extension GNUStep, either). I saw a Color Turbo slab for
> sale recently:
>
> http://denver.craigslist.org/sys/5677975263.html
>
> I passed. That machine is sweet, for what it is.

Wow! That's great value! If only I were on the same continent!

> However, like most
> hobbyists I tend to gravitate toward machines I actually used "back in the
> day".

True.

> In the 90's I was a student, mostly.

1980s for me. The expensive kit I couldn't afford were things like the
Apple ][ and BBC Micro, or even a fully-tricked-out C64.

Later the Amiga, ST and Mac. By the time I had some money, 2nd hand
Acorn Archimedes were available for  There was no-freakin-way I was
> going to afford a NeXT machine. They were prohibitively expensive (or at
> least that's my recollection): even more so than high-end Macs.

Yes they were. Part of a non-compete agreement between Steve Jobs &
Apple Computer, you see.

> Plus, back
> in the 1990's I met a couple of people who did own them, and they were
> *super-snobby* about it, which also turned me off.

Well, they had reason. In their time they were /incredibly/ radical computers.

> It's a bit like BMW
> owners today. I don't care if they put 1000 HP in them, even most of their
> sportscars ('cept the whacky hybrid) still looks to me like mom's car
> leaving the tennis courts at the country club to head out to a PTA
> meeting. I'm guessing I will never be a BMW fan or a NeXT bigot.

Wouldn't know. I don't do cars. I like BMW bikes, though. Had an R80/7
with a sidecar for many years.

> GNUStep wants to clone their whole API and the UI, as you know. I wish
> them luck but it's nothing that exciting to me personally.

Interesting. I think it's a hugely big deal, but it's too late, sadly.

> It's
> interesting that you bring it up now that Linux is committing anti-UNIX
> heresy on a regular basis. Maybe GNUStep's future is now brighter? It's
> still very fiddly and immature the last time I looked at it, but in terms
> of the overall approach, it does appear to have some nice plumbing and
> backing-ideas.

It's a million-to-one shot, I reckon.

And similar comments to those re ReactOS and MS lawyers apply.

> I'd rather see GNUStep succeed than GNOME or KDE (fantasy
> on my part), honestly.

Me too!

> Those two are just hopeless chaos-impregnated
> hairballs with ridiculous dependency chains which are starting to pollute
> working/good/not-at-all-broken areas of the *OS* at this point. I've never
> liked either project (though I could almost stand GNOME for short periods
> in the early days).

GNOME 2 was all right. Best desktop of its time.

GNOME 3's main role seems to be inspiring replacements for itself and
providing some foundations for them. ;-)

> Then again, I'm not one of those "Linux world
> domination" types who want to somehow capture every user, no matter how
> low we have to set the bar to snag them.

I think it's arguably happened, actually, in the form of your next paragraph.

> Google Android has shown that folks can (successfully) bastardize
> Linux/UNIX into something very weird, proprietary, custom, and no longer
> even resembling UNIX, much. So, now that this sort of blaspheming is
> normal, why not try to make a *decent* desktop OS from it, eh? Lord knows,
> Ubuntu is trying.

Well quite.

> Who knows, maybe Android will become that.

Nah, not with Chrome OS etc. around.

> I'll catch
> the screenshots... I'd rather not use an OS where soo many of the apps
> are pre-infected with some type of malware or does things behind the
> scenes I wouldn't approve of (yet the "store" claims they are "virus"
> free, eh?). Funny how they can redefine "virus" or "malware" as it suits
> 

Re: DEC boards at recycler

[Kirk Davis]

I have several extra if you are looking for Qbus cpus for the cost of shipping. 
Contract me off list.

Kirk

> On Jul 14, 2016, at 5:05 AM, Noel Chiappa  wrote:
> 
>> From: Devin Davison
> 
>> I have a spare unibus chasis and am have been looking for a cpu card
>> for a while.
> 
> Umm, those CPUs are all QBUS CPUs, not UNIBUS. Was your "unibus" a typo for
> 'QBUS'? If not, all those CPU boards are, alas, of no use to you.
> 
>> The memory boards M8067, real time clock M7856, and serial card M8043
>> are of interest.
> 
> Likewise most of these boards are QBUS, the M7856 being the only UNIBUS one.
> 
>   Noel

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Kip Koon wrote:

Hi Guys,
I have been suspicious of Microsoft pirating CP/M for decades!  Back in 
my twenties, I was reading about CP/M in the college library where I 
attended thinking, "Wow!  CP/M looks EXACTLY like MS-DOS!"  So I went on 
a reading spree and found out that CP/M was written by Gary Kildall well 
before MS-DOS was supposedly by Bill Gates!  It's a long history that I 
obviously don't need to go into here since there is so much about it on 
the Internet.


No, but you should learn it.
LOTS more details are readily available about every portion of this 
over-simplified shortened history.   The major aspects are undisputed, but 
there are opinions about minor details.  (such as various versions of the 
culture clash)   "Gary HAD TO blow off the IBM meeting, because there was 
a binder of documentation that had to be delivered to Bill Godbout, and 
it was not POSSIBLE to find ANYBODY else to carry it to Oakland 
(airport).  Why would he have to be there for IBM to apply for a license?"



OF COURSE MS-DOS looks exactly like CP/M!
THAT was the intent!  It would have been unusable as a placeholder if it 
didn't.

NO, Bill Gates did NOT write MS-DOS.


Gary Kildall wrote CP/M.
It was very well established as the defacto standard.
DRI "Digital Research Incorporated" (formerly "Intergalactic Digital 
Research") began working on CP/M-86, a version of CP/M for 8086 based 
machines.


Seattle Computer Products (SCP) was building an 8086 based machine.
Hardware was beginning to work, but CP/M-86 wasn't available yet.
Tim Paterson (of SCP) started working on system software.

At NCC ("National Computer Conference") 1979, SCP shared a booth with 
Microsoft and Lifeboat (big distributor for CP/M and Microsoft products).
Tim Paterson was intrigued by Microsoft Stand-Alone BASIC (BASIC with 
enough of an OS built in to support disk files - best known, although 
without the name, is RS Coco).


SCP started shipping some 8086 based CPUs with "Stand-Alone BASIC-86".
There was an assumption that CP/M would ultimately be the OS, but CP/M-86 
wasn't available yet.
Paterson started to write a "placeholder" - a crude substitute for an OS 
that could be used instead of the OS for testing and completing the 
hardware design.
He studied what CP/M did, and wrote a crude imitation of it as a 
placeholder.  Although he studied it in order to make his behave the same, 
he denies [moderately credibly] ever having access to the source code of 
CP/M, nor copying code directly, merely writing simple obvious code to 
behave exactly the same.

He called that temporary OS, "QDOS" ("Quick and Dirty Operating System")
http://www.patersontech.com/dos/softalk.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_DOS_operating_systems

Instead of CP/M's disk formats and directory structure, he made his like 
the file system of Stand-Alone-BASIC.


For marketing purposes, it was sold as "86-DOS".  Apparently "quick and 
dirty" didn't seem marketable!


When IBM decided to take over the personal computer market, they didn't do 
their homework very well.
Intel convinced them to use the 8088, to have a gateway into 16 bit, 
instead of building a true 8 bit machine.
One of the IBM people had seen a "Microsoft Softcard" (a Z80 
co-processor plus CP/M for Apple][).


IBM went to Microsoft for "BASIC and CP/M".

Microsoft sent them to DRI for CP/M.

There was an EXTREME culture clash between IBM and DRI, that included 
Gary blowing off the meeting, since IBM could simply fill out the forms 
"like any other customer" and leave them with Gary's wife.  IBM did not 
want to do business with "hippies".  (4 years ago, I visited the DRI house 
(801 Lighthouse,Pacific Grove), to see for myself the view from the 
upstairs window ("OMG, are those guys coming to the door, DEA?").


IBM went back to Microsoft, where Bill Gates made his people suit up, and 
IBM made the BASIC deal contingent on an OS.


Bill Gates went down the street to SCP, and negotiated a deal 
to be able to sell licenses to Q-DOS/86-DOS/SB-86 to an unnamed client.


Microsoft hired Paterson, renamed it MS-DOS, and licensed to IBM. 
Paterson worked to finish the OS, and start the next major revision.


Gary Kildall got tired of people telling him that he had made the biggest 
screwup in history.  Towards the end of his life, he was drinking heavily.



Since MS-DOS was an imitation of CP/M, rumors that it stole code from CP/M 
have always existed.   Some code WILL match - if you are doing the exact 
same thing, will you, in places, write the exact same code?  How much 
match does it take to assume copying, instead of similar coding?
Having explicitly decided to use identical data structures, what are the 
chances of coincidentally choosing the exact same algorithm for a given 
portion of a task?  If you both use DAA for printing a number in decimal, 
will that code match?


Periodically, there will be urban legends of hidden DRI copyright 
messages in MS-DOS, or east

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Guy Sotomayor Jr]

> On Jul 14, 2016, at 9:46 AM, Fred Cisin  wrote:
> 
> 
> When IBM decided to take over the personal computer market, they didn't do 
> their homework very well.
> Intel convinced them to use the 8088, to have a gateway into 16 bit, instead 
> of building a true 8 bit machine.
> One of the IBM people had seen a "Microsoft Softcard" (a Z80 co-processor 
> plus CP/M for Apple][).
> 

IBM chose the 8088 because the bus was close enough to the 8085 that the 
peripherals from the S/23 could
be re-used with minor tweaks (in many cases just a re-layout).

They wanted something that would allow > 64KB of RAM without having to go 
through the pains of what was
done on S/23 (it was an 8085 system that has 192KB of ROM and upto 128KB of 
RAM) and none of the 8-bit
micros could do that.

IBM had looked at the PC market for a while.  It was actually TJ Watson Jr that 
instructed that a “skunk” team
be formed to see how quickly a PC with an IBM logo could be produced.  He was 
afraid of Apple making
inroads into IBM’s traditional markets and wanted to prevent that.  It was 
never envisioned to be a huge market
for these things…it was viewed only as a hobbyist thing that had the potential 
to take away business from 
IBM’s traditional machines.

TTFN - Guy

RE: Reproduction micros

[Brad H]

I have kind of a counter around my 'office' and I've laid out stuff on top
of and under it (and even stuff on top of the stuff).  I have one 'work'
desk where I set up a machine or two and play.  My Digital Group Z80 has
been occupying that spot for months -- just too much fun to play with.  But
my Amiga 2000 is right next to it.

I remember after seeing that Amiga 2000 at the store trying desperately to
convince my Dad to buy one.  I don't remember what the exact price point was
but it was up there, and his concern was compatibility with work.  An IBM
loyalist, he went from PCjr to PC to AT to PS/2.  I do remember knowing that
they had the XT emulation board available for the Amiga and trying that
angle with him to no avail.  Later on as a consolation he acquiesced to
putting in a (then) very expensive 2400 baud modem into our PS/2 so I could
BBS.

My question about the FPGA Amigas is can you not just emulate pretty much
anything on a PC these days?  I never tried Amiga emulation (if I have the
real thing I always go to that).  Not sure how much the emulators can
handle.

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Swift
Griggs
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2016 7:50 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts 
Subject: RE: Reproduction micros

On Wed, 13 Jul 2016, Brad H wrote:
> I think the Amiga project is neat, although personally I'm not sure 
> I'd find a need for one.

I have an Amiga 3000 (my personal favorite), but I have limited space so I
can only have about two "classic" systems set up at once (and those are
usually SGI machines in the retro-spots-of-active-honor). I'm not one of
those types who has a personal warehouse with loads of old gear stacked on
huge shelves. So, I find that I spend a lot more time with a MIST FPGA Amiga
than my real 3000. The main reason being that since it can use VGA + USB,
it's small, and it's super easy to put on a KVM make it attractive in my
case. Plus it can emulate so many micros, I get more time with them. 

> The thing about the Amiga was its wow factor

I totally agree. I'm not a huge fan of Workbench, but the Amiga hardware and
the way folks exploited it in games, demos, and applications was the thing
that impressed me. All those custom chips doing interesting things (music
and graphics - there was no bean-counting-co-processor thankfully) while at
the time my impression of PeeCees was that they just bottleneck'd everything
through one pathetically slow CPU with brain-damaged memory management and
then wanted to brag in a dull magazine about mind-numbing things like how
fast you could get a spreadsheet done or reconcile accounts payable for your
boss... ie, ral inspiring stuff to a 14 year old (*yawn*). I see things
a bit differently, now, (I actually think DOS and x86 is cooler now than I
did back in the day) but that's how I felt as a teen.

Of course the x86 today just feels like it's so complex that the actual
microcode you "get" to access & play with isn't really reflecting what's
going on inside. It's just some shared fiction while the CPU really does
super-complex optimizations way beyond what any one person can really
understand anymore. It's also why I haven't curiously disassembled any C
code in probably a decade. I realized the compiler could always do a better
job and use instructions or features I didn't even know existed.  
Perhaps, I think that way because I'm not a specialized EE staring at chip
lithography all day. However, others have made the point more elegantly
before on the list.

> I remember walking into Compucentre (Canadian chain) in the mid-80s.. 
> and there's all the computers from 8 bit heaven and their 16 color 
> graphics (if you were lucky).. and then there's this one computer on a 
> pedestal featuring a totally real jungle cat prowling onscreen.  It 
> just blew the doors off everything else there [...]

I had nearly the same experience at a chain here in the states called
"Electronics Boutique". They'd have a couple of PeeCees running demos and
facing out the storefront. Your eyes would always been drawn to the Amiga
running a Dragon's Lair or Space Ace demo (or something else awesome). I
remember being in the store talking to the staff and people walking in to
get a PeeCee and walking out with an Amiga because the kids were so
impressed with the games and graphics etc...

Also, I've heard versions of this same story from at least three other
people. It seems to be a very common experience. It definitely whet my
appetite for Amigas, too. However, at the time $$$ was a big problem for me
and my family. So, it really wasn't until they were started to become quite
obsolete that I finally got to own one. By that time, I was into UNIX and so
it was already just a "retro curiosity" but one I still enjoy.

I do wish I'd got the chance to use Amigas to do something "real" when they
were state of the art. That or I wish I'd had an A500 the day they hit the
shelves and had

Re: Reproduction micros

[Liam Proven]

On 14 July 2016 at 17:56, Brad H  wrote:
> My question about the FPGA Amigas is can you not just emulate pretty much
> anything on a PC these days?  I never tried Amiga emulation (if I have the
> real thing I always go to that).  Not sure how much the emulators can
> handle.

Yes you can, and sometimes with better fidelity, but it doesn't
_transform_ your generic C21 computer into a retro machine. You're
running a program under your normal OS. It doesn't look or feel the
same.

But running vintage kit takes effort, knowledge, possibly
troubleshooting & repair skills, and you need to own it or know where
to get it.

Whereas you can buy a new FPGA-based recreation, usually for not much,
and whereas it's not the same, it is a computer. It boots and runs the
same OS as the old machine. No emulation, it's real hardware, and
probably better than the original.

-- 
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)

Re: Reproduction micros

[Liam Proven]

On 12 July 2016 at 18:10, Steve Browne  wrote:
> The ZX Spectrum Next is going to be interesting http://www.specnext.com/
>
> Look at that industrial design! Designed by Rick Dickinson who was behind
> the ZX80,ZX81, ZX Spectrum, Spectrum Plus and QL


It's pretty but they're only renders so far. There's no hardware yet.
It will, in theory, be a redesigned TBBlue in a retro-ish case.

If you want an off-the-shelf FPGA enhanced Spectrum, it already exists:

http://zxuno.speccy.org/index_e.shtml

Availability is limited and erratic, though. Like a Mac mini, it's
BYODKM. And it doesn't have a Spectrum expansion connector, because
it's a 3.3V device and the Speccy was 5V -- but they're working on it.

-- 
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)

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

When IBM decided to take over the personal computer market, they didn't do 
their homework very well.
Intel convinced them to use the 8088, to have a gateway into 16 bit, instead of 
building a true 8 bit machine.
One of the IBM people had seen a "Microsoft Softcard" (a Z80 co-processor plus 
CP/M for Apple][).


On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Guy Sotomayor Jr wrote:
IBM chose the 8088 because the bus was close enough to the 8085 that the 
peripherals from the S/23 could be re-used with minor tweaks (in many 
cases just a re-layout).
They wanted something that would allow > 64KB of RAM without having to 
go through the pains of what was done on S/23 (it was an 8085 system 
that has 192KB of ROM and upto 128KB of RAM) and none of the 8-bit 
micros could do that.


It makes sense to me.  Hardware would be same as for an ordinary 8 bit 
machine, but lots more (1MB!!) memory map.
Since nobody could possibly need more than 10 times the current RAM, big 
chunks of space could be used for memory mapped I/O, such as both a text 
display AND an amazing 640x200 graphics display.


IBM had looked at the PC market for a while.  It was actually TJ Watson 
Jr that instructed that a “skunk” team be formed to see how quickly 
a PC with an IBM logo could be produced.  He was afraid of Apple making 
inroads into IBM’s traditional markets and wanted to prevent that. 
It was never envisioned to be a huge market for these things…it was 
viewed only as a hobbyist thing that had the potential to take away 
business from IBM’s traditional machines.


They assumed [correctly] that they could, with trivial ease, simply step 
in and dominate that "home computer" market.  Particularly useful if 
anybody was crazy enough to take in a home computer to work and use it 
for some minor office tasks.


I'm glad that Apple survived IBM's entry and presence in that market.

Re: NuTek Mac comes

[Fred Cisin]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:

meeting. I'm guessing I will never be a BMW fan or a NeXT bigot.

Wouldn't know. I don't do cars. I like BMW bikes, though. Had an R80/7
with a sidecar for many years.


I like BMW bikes, and even the imitations (Ural, Dnepr).
I love the Isetta, but somehow none of their cars since then appeal to me.

I played with a NeXT briefly, before release, trying to get a printer to 
connect.  I'm not sure if I've even seen one since then.




Google Android has shown that folks can (successfully) bastardize
Linux/UNIX into something very weird, proprietary, custom, and no longer
even resembling UNIX, much.


How many even know of a connection?


Who knows, maybe Android will become that.


as phone/PDA software, it does OK.
Giving iPhone competition.
Trying to use it as a computer platform seems far-fetched.

Re: NuTek Mac comes

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
> That was one of the things people didn't talk about in the classic days. 
> I supported classic MacOS Macs up until the early noughties. They were 
> horribly unstable.

I had forgot myself until I recently started messing with OS8.1 again. 
Anecdotally, lately I've felt that 7.6 + Open Transport was a bit more 
stable than 8.1. However, neither approaches "stable" by my definition. 
Some of the bugs I've seen have also been really nasty. For example I was 
playing with Aldus Pagemaker from way-back-when and I noticed that after 
you saved over the same file N number of times it'd become corrupt and 
unusable.

The hardware is solid, though. When I fire up NetBSD on the machine it's 
pretty much just as stable as it is on the x86 side, just slower. I also 
notice that A/UX seems to be much more stable than OS8.1. For example, 
when I fire up "fetch" (an FTP client) that often crashes and locks up my 
8.1 setup on A/UX 3.1, it still crashes a lot but A/UX doesn't lock up. It 
just kills the client process. Of course, on A/UX, I usually just use the 
CLI for such things anyhow. It was an enlightening experiment, though.

> I embraced OS X early on, but some people hung on as long as possible, 
> and others disliked OS X so much they switched to Windows.

Hmm. I didn't run into anyone who was a dyed-in-the-wool Apple fan who 
wasn't over-the-moon excited about OSX. I thought it was pretty cool, 
myself. However, on freeware UNIX variants I'm the guy who often just gets 
sick of having graphics at all (even though I use Fluxbox 90% of the time) 
and drops down to the framebuffer console for a while for a refreshing 
break. :-) So, OSX was too "slick" for me. I (mostly) like my UNIX uncut. 
:-)

For some reason, I don't have the same hangups on non-UNIX OSs. It's 
because my biases are weaker outside of UNIX boxen.

> All the now-nostalgicized-over '80s OSes were pretty horribly unstable: 
> Windows 3.x, and indeed 9x; Amiga OS; ST GEM; Acorn RISC OS. None had 
> proper memory protection, few had preemptive multitasking or didn't do 
> it well.

Yep. Don't forget my old friend DOS, either. Ctrl-alt-delete keys got 
quite a workout on those boxes, too. However, it's travails were *nothing* 
compared to say Win98ME, which crashed 3-4 times a day for me on ALL 
machines I tried it on. That was bottom-barrel Windows, IMHO.

> -up OS. In my experience, more stable than OS/2 >=2.

I've spent all of about five minutes with OS/2. After working for IBM for 
years, and watching that drama just soured me on touching it. I might have 
liked it, though. Who knows? It just didn't have hardly any software I 
cared about and I had 100% certainty that IBM would screw it up.

> 1980s for me. The expensive kit I couldn't afford were things like the 
> Apple ][ and BBC Micro, or even a fully-tricked-out C64.

Glad it wasn't just me.  :-)

> > Plus, back in the 1990's I met a couple of people who did own them, 
> > and they were *super-snobby* about it, which also turned me off.
> Well, they had reason. In their time they were /incredibly/ radical 
> computers.

It's a fair point, but something that gets my back up faster than just 
about anything computing-related is unvarnished elitism by spoiled rich 
kids. Ie.. people who think it's not what you know or what you can do with 
what you have - it's only what you own. Ugh.

> Wouldn't know. I don't do cars. I like BMW bikes, though. Had an R80/7 
> with a sidecar for many years.

That actually sounds pretty fun and much harder to visualize that at a PTA 
meeting. :-)

> GNOME 2 was all right. Best desktop of its time.

XFCE was a close second for a while and is still going pretty strong. If I 
wanted an "integrated desktop environment" these days (which I don't) I'd 
probably reach for that. 

> GNOME 3's main role seems to be inspiring replacements for itself and 
> providing some foundations for them. ;-)

Ha! I would agree wholeheartedly. 

> I think it's arguably happened, actually, in the form of your next 
> paragraph.

It has. I agree. The numbers of Android devices are mind-boggling. These 
wasteoids running into water fountains while texting *are* Linux users, 
but I'm not sure they really represent anything but consumers and the full 
implications of that are yet to be seen.

Woman falls into fountain while texting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D66L1o-uES0

People here spend *insane* amounts of time on them. In my eyes, 
Smartphones are the new TV. Another opiate of the masses.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/informate-report-social-media-smartphone-use/

> > Who knows, maybe Android will become that.
> Nah, not with Chrome OS etc. around.

Didn't Sergei Brin say they'd probably get merged? I seem to remember 
that, but who knows. I don't think I've even seen ChromeOS. The idea of a 
"cloud OS" is utterly repugnant to me on being-pwned-by-big-brother 
basis. I won't touch that crap. That's one of many reasons why I actually

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Fred Cisin wrote:
> CP/M rights later passed through to Corel and Caldera.

I have some foggy memory of Caldera using the "Digital Research" name, at 
least internally and on some documents. However, it's been a long time and 
the SCO-connected legacy left a terrible taste. 

You know the history well, obviously, after reading your post. Do you 
happen to know if the "Digital Research" you mention and the use of the 
name by Caldera were related to the same original entity? IIRC, I could be 
wrong but I even seem to remember downloading "DR-DOS" from Caldera before 
FreeDOS was fully baked to get a hold of nice free-as-in-beer version of 
DOS... but it could just be the drugs. 

-Swift

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Rich Alderson]

From: Fred Cisin
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2016 9:47 AM

> On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Kip Koon wrote:

>> So I went on a reading spree and found out that CP/M was written by Gary
>> Kildall well before MS-DOS was supposedly by Bill Gates!  It's a long
>> history that I obviously don't need to go into here since there is so much
>> about it on the Internet.

> No, but you should learn it.
> LOTS more details are readily available about every portion of this 
> over-simplified shortened history.

  [snip]

> Bill Gates went down the street to SCP, and negotiated a deal 
> to be able to sell licenses to Q-DOS/86-DOS/SB-86 to an unnamed client.

Not Bill Gates, Paul Allen, as detailed in his autobiography _Idea Man_.

Just for the record.

Rich

Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

mailto:ri...@livingcomputermuseum.org

http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

Re: NuTek Mac comes

[Mouse]

>> All the now-nostalgicized-over '80s OSes were pretty horribly
>> unstable: [...]

Personally - I went through my larval phase under it - I'd cite VMS as
a counterexample.  Even today I think a lot of OSes would do well to
learn from it.  (Not that I think it's perfect, of course.  But I do
think it did some things better than most of what I see today.)

/~\ The ASCII Mouse
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RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

Bill Gates went down the street to SCP, and negotiated a deal
to be able to sell licenses to Q-DOS/86-DOS/SB-86 to an unnamed client.


On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Rich Alderson wrote:

Not Bill Gates, Paul Allen, as detailed in his autobiography _Idea Man_.
Just for the record.


Thanks!
I appreciate corrections to get it right on such details.


Someday, perhaps there should be a detailed version of this part of the 
history.
(if only to answer some of the really absurd ridiculous ones, such as 
"Pirates Of The Valley" (Bill Gates cold-calling IBM to sell them on the 
idea of having an OS??, and then telling us that we should learn their 
version!))


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Chris Hanson]

On Jul 14, 2016, at 10:03 AM, Guy Sotomayor Jr  wrote:
> 
> IBM had looked at the PC market for a while.  It was actually TJ Watson Jr 
> that instructed that a “skunk” team
> be formed to see how quickly a PC with an IBM logo could be produced.  He was 
> afraid of Apple making
> inroads into IBM’s traditional markets and wanted to prevent that.  It was 
> never envisioned to be a huge market
> for these things…it was viewed only as a hobbyist thing that had the 
> potential to take away business from 
> IBM’s traditional machines.

And interestingly, these days IBM is a huge user of Macs… which these days use 
a derivative of the system architecture that IBM developed!

  -- Chris

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Chuck Guzis]

I don't get the significance of any of this.

CP/M-80 is what, less than 16K of code (not counting the very few
utilities that come bundled with it)?  It's not rocket science and pales
in comparison with the mainframe and mini OSes that were around at the
time--and indeed, some of the more advanced OSes for microcomputers.

It's ridiculously simple to reverse-engineer (I know, I've done it),
given nothing more than the published documentation and a running system.

Everyone seems to forget about the work-alikes, such as TPM for the
Epson QX-80.

GEM for the Atari ST is essntially a clone of MS-DOS functionality for
the 68K with a graphics enhancement tacked on.  Yet I've never heard any
accusations that DRI "pirated" MS-DOS.

A tempest in a teapot.

At least from where I sit,
Chuck

Re: Reproduction micros

[ben]

On 7/14/2016 8:50 AM, Swift Griggs wrote:


I do wish I'd got the chance to use Amigas to do something "real" when
they were state of the art. That or I wish I'd had an A500 the day they
hit the shelves and had all the cool games. I'm sure that would have been
a lot of fun.


I had hopes on the Amiga until they came out with the 2000*.


-Swift


Ben.
* Lets add a brain dead cpu and run DOS.

Re: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote:

GEM for the Atari ST is essntially a clone of MS-DOS functionality for
the 68K with a graphics enhancement tacked on.  Yet I've never heard any
accusations that DRI "pirated" MS-DOS.


Ah, but what a funny lawsuit!!



A tempest in a teapot.
At least from where I sit,


To most people, assembly language and operating systems are "complex and 
mysterious"


Many don't grasp the concept of reverse engineering, and assume piracy.


I think that Paterson was well able to write work-alike code.

Re: NuTek Mac comes

[Sean Conner]

It was thus said that the Great Mouse once stated:
> >> All the now-nostalgicized-over '80s OSes were pretty horribly
> >> unstable: [...]
> 
> Personally - I went through my larval phase under it - I'd cite VMS as
> a counterexample.  Even today I think a lot of OSes would do well to
> learn from it.  (Not that I think it's perfect, of course.  But I do
> think it did some things better than most of what I see today.)

  What I've read about VMS makes me think the networking was incredible. But
having used VMS (as a student), the command line *sucked* (except for the
help facility---that blows the Unix man command out of the water).

  -spc

Re: NuTek Mac comes

[Mouse]

>> [...] VMS [...]
> What I've read about VMS makes me think the networking was
> incredible.

For its time, certainly.  Even today, there are a few things a DECnet
stack does better than an IP stack.

> But having used VMS (as a student), the command line *sucked* (except
> for the help facility---that blows the Unix man command out of the
> water).

I'm not sure I agree.  The VMS command line I used sucked, but so did
Unix shells of the time, and in many of the same ways.

As for VMS HELP, I don't think the tool is all that much better; what
is _much_ better is the documentation it contains.  DEC documentation
of the VMS era was _awesome_.  Even today I rarely see it equaled,
never mind bettered, in many ways.

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VMS stability back in the day (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Sean Conner wrote:
> What I've read about VMS makes me think the networking was incredible. 

Big Fat Disclaimer: I know very little about VMS. I'm a UNIX zealot.

I work with a lot of VMS experts and being around them has taught me a lot 
more about it than I ever thought to learn. I respect the OS a lot and I 
agree with Mouse about parts of it still being object lessons to other 
OSes. I don't see any point in "UNIX vs VMS" which I gather was a big 
bruhaha back in the 1990s.

HOWEVER...

Personally, given the mess of MultiNet, TCP/IP Services, and TCPWare, I 
wouldn't make that statement about networking *at all*. However, maybe you 
are talking about DECnet. I don't know much about DECnet except that it's 
very proprietary and it's got a bunch of "phases" (versions) that are 
radically different. Some are super-simple and not even routable, and 
others are almost as nasty as an OSI protocol stack.

When using TCP/IP related tools they all seem like basic-functionality 
ports from the Unix side (but stable and usable nonetheless). Plus, IIRC, 
some of the code came right outta Tru64 / OSF1 in the 90's. That's what 
some of the VMS guys told me, anyhow.

> But having used VMS (as a student), the command line *sucked* (except 
> for the help facility---that blows the Unix man command out of the 
> water).

The DCL command line is very foreign to me. I've seen people rave about 
how regular and predictable things are in DCL, and I've seen some evidence 
of that. I've also seen some spot-on criticisms of DCL scripting vis-a-vis 
shell scripting and that's also accurate.

As far as the help system goes, it's got that regularity I mentioned. It's 
very predictable to get help for a given switch or command argument. 
However, versus a modern FreeBSD box? The man pages are MUCH better in my 
opinion that DCL help. They are more detailed with sections of help that's 
usually not even available in the DCL help. 

As a UNIX guy who doesn't hate VMS at all (I think it's cool) my basic 
impression is this:

Strengths versus Unix:
 * More granular authentication/authorization system built in from very 
   early days I'm told. "capabilities" style access control, too. 
 * Great hardware error logging that generally tells you exactly what's 
   wrong (even if you have to run a turd like WSEA to get it out of a 
   binary error log - same as Tru64 though). 
 * Lots of performance metrics and instrumentation of the OS's features
 * Very solid clustering. (no, it's not incredible and unsurpassed like 
   some people still say - other OSes have similar features now, but it 
   took a very long time to catch up to VMS.)
 * Some fairly nice backup features (but not as advanced as, say, 
   whats in LVM2 or ZFS in some ways). 
 * Regularity. It's hard to articulate but VMS is very very "regular" and 
   predictable in how it does things.
 * Crazy stable.  

Downsides versus Unix:

 * There is a lot of software ported to VMS, but a lot still missing too. 
   Open source projects often lag by years. It's all volunteers
 * No x86 support, you gotta find a VAX, Alpha, or Integrity/IA64 box. 
   Maybe VSI will fix this, and maybe they are so politically screwed up 
   they will never get it off the ground. We'll see. I have an open mind. 
 * DCL is very very weird to a UNIX user and I miss tons of features from 
   UNIX. I say "weird" but when it comes to scripting, I'd go as far as 
   saying "weak". I mean, no "while", no "for", and lots of other things I 
   dearly miss. 
 * No source code for the masses and licenses out the yazoo. It nickel and 
   dimes you for every feature (but so does Tru64 and many others to be 
   fair).

If you are a VMS bigot and you take offense at any of this, please go easy 
on me. I'm just giving my impressions, not stating any of this as absolute 
truth or law. I'm certainly not trying to bust on VMS. I think VMS is 
neat.

-Swift

Re: NuTek Mac comes

[Jerry Kemp]

On 07/14/16 12:42 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:



Hmm. I didn't run into anyone who was a dyed-in-the-wool Apple fan who
wasn't over-the-moon excited about OSX. I thought it was pretty cool,
myself. However, on freeware UNIX variants I'm the guy who often just gets
sick of having graphics at all (even though I use Fluxbox 90% of the time)
and drops down to the framebuffer console for a while for a refreshing
break. :-) So, OSX was too "slick" for me. I (mostly) like my UNIX uncut.
:-)




I'm missing something here.  Although most did/are using the Apple supplied 
GUI/Aqua, it wasn't a requirement.


I have/run OpenWindows (compiled for OS X/PPC), and also, although mostly for 
fun, have a copy of the Mosaic web browser, also compiled for OS X/PPC.


Aside from the Netinfo directory server, from a basic level, you can pretty much 
do & run anything you would on Solaris, Unix, *BSD or Lunix.  What OS X didn't 
ship with wasn't too hard to compile on my own.





-up OS. In my experience, more stable than OS/2 >=2.


I've spent all of about five minutes with OS/2. After working for IBM for
years, and watching that drama just soured me on touching it. I might have
liked it, though. Who knows? It just didn't have hardly any software I
cared about and I had 100% certainty that IBM would screw it up.



In defense of OS/2, I went from straight DOS to OS/2 1.3.  I was taking a lot of 
college programming classes, and in Assembly language specifically, I found any 
number of ways to blow things up and loose my work.  OS/2 truly provided a 
"better DOS than DOS", and I could blow up a DOS session with my Assembly code 
and go right on working.


Applications are/were a long story on OS/2, that I could write volumes on, but 
in short, if you wanted to play games, DOS and later, Windows was the place to 
be.  Or the more 2000+ updated answer, on a game console.


OTOH, how many word processors/spreadsheets/presentation programs does one need 
per OS?


From a technical perspective, the only big problem I had with OS/2, back in the 
1990's, was the single thread input queue on the new OOUI, WPS (Work Place Shell).


OS/2 is now sold under the name "eComStation" and boots from JFS2 volumes.

In summary, back in the early 1990's, I moved to OS/2.  I didn't do it to get 
some application I needed, I moved for stability in the Wintel world.  And for 
me, it did a great job.


Jerry

Re: VMS stability back in the day (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[Guy Dawson]

I was running a 3 node VAXcluster in the late 1980s. We had two 8550s and
an 8820 connected via a CI star coupler to two HSC70 storage controllers
and 24 RA81 drives; two upright tape (TU78s?) drives too. The drives were
connected to both HSC70s in RAID 1 pairs. We had 11 pairs, a spare and a
quorum disk for the VAXcluster.

The environment was rock solid and ran for many years. We could do rolling
VMS and application upgrades on the three nodes. A great production system.

We even had an X25 based DECnet connection between Australia where the
system was installed and the UK where our software company was based.


On 14 July 2016 at 21:50, Swift Griggs  wrote:

> On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Sean Conner wrote:
> > What I've read about VMS makes me think the networking was incredible.
>
> Big Fat Disclaimer: I know very little about VMS. I'm a UNIX zealot.
>
> I work with a lot of VMS experts and being around them has taught me a lot
> more about it than I ever thought to learn. I respect the OS a lot and I
> agree with Mouse about parts of it still being object lessons to other
> OSes. I don't see any point in "UNIX vs VMS" which I gather was a big
> bruhaha back in the 1990s.
>
> HOWEVER...
>
> Personally, given the mess of MultiNet, TCP/IP Services, and TCPWare, I
> wouldn't make that statement about networking *at all*. However, maybe you
> are talking about DECnet. I don't know much about DECnet except that it's
> very proprietary and it's got a bunch of "phases" (versions) that are
> radically different. Some are super-simple and not even routable, and
> others are almost as nasty as an OSI protocol stack.
>
> When using TCP/IP related tools they all seem like basic-functionality
> ports from the Unix side (but stable and usable nonetheless). Plus, IIRC,
> some of the code came right outta Tru64 / OSF1 in the 90's. That's what
> some of the VMS guys told me, anyhow.
>
> > But having used VMS (as a student), the command line *sucked* (except
> > for the help facility---that blows the Unix man command out of the
> > water).
>
> The DCL command line is very foreign to me. I've seen people rave about
> how regular and predictable things are in DCL, and I've seen some evidence
> of that. I've also seen some spot-on criticisms of DCL scripting vis-a-vis
> shell scripting and that's also accurate.
>
> As far as the help system goes, it's got that regularity I mentioned. It's
> very predictable to get help for a given switch or command argument.
> However, versus a modern FreeBSD box? The man pages are MUCH better in my
> opinion that DCL help. They are more detailed with sections of help that's
> usually not even available in the DCL help.
>
> As a UNIX guy who doesn't hate VMS at all (I think it's cool) my basic
> impression is this:
>
> Strengths versus Unix:
>  * More granular authentication/authorization system built in from very
>early days I'm told. "capabilities" style access control, too.
>  * Great hardware error logging that generally tells you exactly what's
>wrong (even if you have to run a turd like WSEA to get it out of a
>binary error log - same as Tru64 though).
>  * Lots of performance metrics and instrumentation of the OS's features
>  * Very solid clustering. (no, it's not incredible and unsurpassed like
>some people still say - other OSes have similar features now, but it
>took a very long time to catch up to VMS.)
>  * Some fairly nice backup features (but not as advanced as, say,
>whats in LVM2 or ZFS in some ways).
>  * Regularity. It's hard to articulate but VMS is very very "regular" and
>predictable in how it does things.
>  * Crazy stable.
>
> Downsides versus Unix:
>
>  * There is a lot of software ported to VMS, but a lot still missing too.
>Open source projects often lag by years. It's all volunteers
>  * No x86 support, you gotta find a VAX, Alpha, or Integrity/IA64 box.
>Maybe VSI will fix this, and maybe they are so politically screwed up
>they will never get it off the ground. We'll see. I have an open mind.
>  * DCL is very very weird to a UNIX user and I miss tons of features from
>UNIX. I say "weird" but when it comes to scripting, I'd go as far as
>saying "weak". I mean, no "while", no "for", and lots of other things I
>dearly miss.
>  * No source code for the masses and licenses out the yazoo. It nickel and
>dimes you for every feature (but so does Tru64 and many others to be
>fair).
>
> If you are a VMS bigot and you take offense at any of this, please go easy
> on me. I'm just giving my impressions, not stating any of this as absolute
> truth or law. I'm certainly not trying to bust on VMS. I think VMS is
> neat.
>
> -Swift
>
>


-- 
4.4 > 5.4

Looking for the numpad "/" key for an apple extended keyboard II

[Ian Finder]

If you have one, please ping me. mine met a work accident today.

-- 
   Ian Finder
   (206) 395-MIPS
   ian.fin...@gmail.com

OSX, OS/2, ECS, and Blue Lion (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Jerry Kemp wrote:
> I'm missing something here.  Although most did/are using the Apple 
> supplied GUI/Aqua, it wasn't a requirement.

Perhaps there is a way to run an X11 server without Aqua, but I don't know 
of it. However, I'm far from an OSX expert.

> I have/run OpenWindows (compiled for OS X/PPC), and also, although 
> mostly for fun, have a copy of the Mosaic web browser, also compiled for 
> OS X/PPC.

Cool. That sounds interesting. 

> Aside from the Netinfo directory server, from a basic level, you can 
> pretty much do & run anything you would on Solaris, Unix, *BSD or Lunix.  
> What OS X didn't ship with wasn't too hard to compile on my own.

Hmm, not in my experience. IMHO, there is a metric ton of stuff missing 
from OSX. They overload their command line tools to do too much, again, 
IMO. Apple also gives you just about squat in the way of filesystem and 
volume management features that are standard on freely available UNIX 
variants like BSD and Linux. I could go on for a while about what's 
missing, but it's a style-argument only. I don't hate OSX, but I'm 
definitely not ready to view it as UNIX-with-benefits and have some very 
long and specific reasons for that. It's not just a gut impression.

> In defense of OS/2, I went from straight DOS to OS/2 1.3.  I was taking 
> a lot of college programming classes, and in Assembly language 
> specifically, I found any number of ways to blow things up and loose my 
> work.  OS/2 truly provided a "better DOS than DOS", and I could blow up 
> a DOS session with my Assembly code and go right on working.

I had similar experiences with DOS and something called DESQview/X. I 
think it was made by Quarterdeck Systems. I didn't know squat about UNIX 
or XDMCP at the time, but it was still beyond awesome to me to be able to 
run a DOS window and do something uber-stupid in Lattice-C or Borland and 
watch it gracefully recover. So, I can emphatically understand what you 
mean.

> OTOH, how many word processors/spreadsheets/presentation programs does 
> one need per OS?

Fair point, but choice is good, too.

> From a technical perspective, the only big problem I had with OS/2, back 
> in the 1990's, was the single thread input queue on the new OOUI, WPS 
> (Work Place Shell).

That's inside baseball to me. I'll take your word for it.

> OS/2 is now sold under the name "eComStation" and boots from JFS2 
> volumes.

You probably already know, but it seems there is another one now, too, 
based on ECS:

https://www.arcanoae.com/blue-lion-go/

Also FYI, just to be super-clear, I didn't mean to bash or attack OS/2. I 
was just saying I'm too ignorant about it to make a judgment and IBM 
burned me too much to care. However, for all I know it's super-awesome.

-Swift

Re: Looking for the numpad "/" key for an apple extended keyboard II

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Ian Finder wrote:
> If you have one, please ping me. mine met a work accident today.

Do you happen to know if the key/keycap from an Apple Adjustable Keyboard 
number pad would work? I bought a Quadra 660AV and Quadra 700 in the last 
few months and the 660AV came with an AAKB but the keyboard is kind of 
shot (several keys are a bit sticky and work half-assed).

If you want it, it's yours. I'll throw it in a box and ship it (the whole 
AAKB) to you just to keep it out of the trash one day. It's bright white 
at least (very little yellowing esp on the keypad).

If you don't want it and someone else does, let me know. 

-Swift

Re: VMS stability back in the day (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[Sean Conner]

It was thus said that the Great Swift Griggs once stated:
> On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Sean Conner wrote:
> > What I've read about VMS makes me think the networking was incredible. 
> 
> Big Fat Disclaimer: I know very little about VMS. I'm a UNIX zealot.
> 
> I work with a lot of VMS experts and being around them has taught me a lot 
> more about it than I ever thought to learn. I respect the OS a lot and I 
> agree with Mouse about parts of it still being object lessons to other 
> OSes. I don't see any point in "UNIX vs VMS" which I gather was a big 
> bruhaha back in the 1990s.
> 
> HOWEVER...
> 
> Personally, given the mess of MultiNet, TCP/IP Services, and TCPWare, I 
> wouldn't make that statement about networking *at all*. However, maybe you 
> are talking about DECnet. I don't know much about DECnet except that it's 
> very proprietary and it's got a bunch of "phases" (versions) that are 
> radically different. Some are super-simple and not even routable, and 
> others are almost as nasty as an OSI protocol stack.

  I never did much with the networking on VMS (being a student, all I really
did with the account was a few Pascal programs for Programming 101 and
printing really large text files since I didn't want to waste the my printer
paper).  All I really have to go on is what I've read about it, and it was
probably DECnet stuff (clustering, etc) that made the network invisible.

  Yes, there are other systems out that that may have similar functionality
(QNX is one I did work with, and loved it).

> > But having used VMS (as a student), the command line *sucked* (except 
> > for the help facility---that blows the Unix man command out of the 
> > water).
> 
> The DCL command line is very foreign to me. I've seen people rave about 
> how regular and predictable things are in DCL, and I've seen some evidence 
> of that. I've also seen some spot-on criticisms of DCL scripting vis-a-vis 
> shell scripting and that's also accurate.

  My complaint was that for simple things (like changing a directory) it was
very verbose compared to Unix (or even MS-DOS).

  But I absolutely *love* the assembly language of the VAX.  It's a
wonderful instruction set.

  -spc (Not that I did much VAX assembly ... )

Re: OSX, OS/2, ECS, and Blue Lion (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[Jerry Kemp]

Thanks for the comments, it's always educational to get the viewpoints and 
experiences from others, on items that are "shared ground".


I didn't mean to come off like an OS/2 fanatic.  I started using OS/2 around 
1990, early 1991 at the latest, and short of Unix (I wasn't a Unix fanatic at 
the time, although I was coming up to speed), I still judge OS/2 to be one of 
the better x86 options for the early and mid 1990's.  Its a given here that you 
looked at the software you wanted to run, then purchased the appropriate 
hardware accordingly.


Thanks for the reminder on the Arca Noae, I'm sure I had read that previously, 
then just selectively chose to drop it from memory.  I haven't used OS/2, or its 
derivatives, exclusively on a day-to-day basis since probably 1997 or 1998 at 
the latest.




On 07/14/16 04:53 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:




In defense of OS/2, I went from straight DOS to OS/2 1.3.  I was taking
a lot of college programming classes, and in Assembly language
specifically, I found any number of ways to blow things up and loose my
work.  OS/2 truly provided a "better DOS than DOS", and I could blow up
a DOS session with my Assembly code and go right on working.


I had similar experiences with DOS and something called DESQview/X. I
think it was made by Quarterdeck Systems. I didn't know squat about UNIX
or XDMCP at the time, but it was still beyond awesome to me to be able to
run a DOS window and do something uber-stupid in Lattice-C or Borland and
watch it gracefully recover. So, I can emphatically understand what you
mean.


OTOH, how many word processors/spreadsheets/presentation programs does
one need per OS?


Fair point, but choice is good, too.


 From a technical perspective, the only big problem I had with OS/2, back
in the 1990's, was the single thread input queue on the new OOUI, WPS
(Work Place Shell).


That's inside baseball to me. I'll take your word for it.


OS/2 is now sold under the name "eComStation" and boots from JFS2
volumes.


You probably already know, but it seems there is another one now, too,
based on ECS:

https://www.arcanoae.com/blue-lion-go/

Also FYI, just to be super-clear, I didn't mean to bash or attack OS/2. I
was just saying I'm too ignorant about it to make a judgment and IBM
burned me too much to care. However, for all I know it's super-awesome.

-Swift

RE: DOS code in CP/M? Revisited...

[Fred Cisin]

CP/M rights later passed through to Corel and Caldera.


On Thu, 14 Jul 2016, Swift Griggs wrote:

I have some foggy memory of Caldera using the "Digital Research" name, at
least internally and on some documents. However, it's been a long time and
the SCO-connected legacy left a terrible taste.
You know the history well, obviously, after reading your post. Do you


Not very.  Just current events during my time.
I was never an important participant.  But, I was there.


happen to know if the "Digital Research" you mention and the use of the
name by Caldera were related to the same original entity? IIRC, I could be
wrong but I even seem to remember downloading "DR-DOS" from Caldera before
FreeDOS was fully baked to get a hold of nice free-as-in-beer version of
DOS...


Yes.  Novell acquired the remains of DRI in 1991?
They sold DR-DOS as "Novell DOS"
Caldera was formed a few years later by some Novell people.

(The Caldera V Microsoft lawsuit was not about copyright; it was 
complaining about dirty dealings by Microsoft, such as putting unnecessary 
code into Windoze 3.1 to make it refuse to run under DR-DOS. There was a 
settlement in 2000? that was believed to be about $250M)


Caldera begat Lineo,

Lineo begat DRDOS, Inc.

DRDOS, Inc. is apparently for sale for $25K.
If you have any expectations of being sued by Microsoft for writing 
anything that resembles any of their stuff, it could be cheap legal 
insurance.   (Adam Osborne was too slow about buying Visicalc debris)
When a company folds, the IP rights may end up with multiple people, 
either in dispute, or simply non-exclusively owned by more then one. 
Hence, Novell could spin off CP/M, without giving up their joint ownership 
of IP rights as protection against Microsoft.




but it could just be the drugs.

Could be.

Re: NuTek Mac comes

[Peter Coghlan]

>
> > But having used VMS (as a student), the command line *sucked* (except
> > for the help facility---that blows the Unix man command out of the
> > water).
>
> I'm not sure I agree.  The VMS command line I used sucked, but so did
> Unix shells of the time, and in many of the same ways.
>

What is it that "sucked" about the VMS command line?  I used it a lot and I
had some issues here and there but I found it to be streets ahead of any other
command line system I came across on anything else anywhere.

(Not that I think we should doing os-wars re-enactments here.  Too many glass
houses to start a stone throwing competition.)

Regards,
Peter Coghlan.

Re: DEC items to either pick up, ship or drop off at VCF midwest

[Paul Anderson]

I think a few list members who have seen the basement have taken a few
pictures. I have no problem if they want to post them to the list.

Some things change often depending on how I feel and if I have help.

I someone wants, I can try to take a few pics with my I phone and text them
to them so they can post them here.

I don't even know if the basement is half of the total.

Paul

On Thu, Jul 14, 2016 at 1:42 AM, Pontus Pihlgren 
wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 08:39:26PM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > > From: Greg Stark
> >
> > > It doesn't seem reasonable to me for you to request buyers provide
> you
> > > with a list of what they would be interested in
> >
> > It might seem more reasonable if you'd seen his basement... :-)
> >
> >   Noel
>
> While I haven't seen the basement in question I know Paul has lots
> and lots of gear, as well as limited time and resources to do
> inventory.
>
> So while a list with pictures would be nice, I think the alternative
> would be that we wouldn't see any of it.
>
> What would be good is a brief description of what vintage and type of
> gear there is.. although Paul probably has "one of each" :)
>
> /P
>

How to execute arbitrary code on a Nintendo

[Eric Christopherson]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/07/how-to-beat-super-mario-bros-3-in-less-than-a-second/

-- 
Eric Christopherson

Re: VMS stability back in the day (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[Mouse]

> Personally, given the mess of MultiNet, TCP/IP Services, and TCPWare,
> I wouldn't make that statement about networking *at all*.

If you think of "networking" as being "IP-based networking", yeah,
probably.  But there's a lot more to networking than just IP.
Specifically, I was talking about DECnet, which was well done and
integrated from the ground up, not glued on after the fact.

/~\ The ASCII Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTMLmo...@rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email!   7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

Re: VMS stability back in the day (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[Richard Loken]

On Fri, 15 Jul 2016, Mouse wrote:


Personally, given the mess of MultiNet, TCP/IP Services, and TCPWare,
I wouldn't make that statement about networking *at all*.


If you think of "networking" as being "IP-based networking", yeah,
probably.  But there's a lot more to networking than just IP.
Specifically, I was talking about DECnet, which was well done and
integrated from the ground up, not glued on after the fact.


And I don't get this notion about lifting the network code out of Tru64
since VAX/VMS had UCX (not my favourite network package) before the
Alpha and associated OSF/1, Digital Unix, Tru64 Unix.  The candidate
for lifting code would be Ultrix which got a lot of its heritage from
BSD4.X.

I think I recall credit given to Berkeley and bsd it the readable UCX
files in VAX/VMS Version 5 but all I have is an Alpha running OpenVMS 8.2
and those file don't contain any copyright or credit notices at all.  They
start off with stuff like this:

/**
*/
/* Created: 18-NOV-1997 11:24:36 by OpenVMS SDL EV1-50 */
/* Source:  22-OCT-1996 00:33:26 
DISK$UCX_BUILD2:[UCX.X42.BL21.SRC.NET]INET_USE

 */
/**
*/

--
  Richard Loken VE6BSV, Systems Programmer - VMS   : "...underneath those
  Athabasca University : tuques we wear, our
  Athabasca, Alberta Canada: heads are naked!"
  ** rllo...@telus.net ** :- Arthur Black

Re: NuTek Mac comes

[Götz Hoffart]

> Am 13.07.2016 um 16:29 schrieb Eric Christopherson 
> :
> 
>> QuickDraw was almost literally the first code running on the Mac once it
>> switched to 68K.
>> 
> 
> Was there a pre-68K period in Mac development?

Yes, 6809: http://www.folklore.org -> search for 6809.

Regards
Götz

Seeking RL02 cable transition connector

[Ethan Dicks]

Asking for a friend... ;-)

An old buddy of mine picked up a PDP-11/73 at auction and we just went
over it tonight - cleaned out some spilled toner from some careless
stacking in a warehouse, and looked over the RL02 on top and it all
seems complete and good to go, except... the connector on the I/O
bulkhead was broken off (the ears and screws remain) and the BC06R
40-pin cable is sticking out.  The drive-to-drive cable is there and
looks intact, but there's nothing at the CPU end to clamp it to.

These get brought up from time to time as people refurb 1980s PDP-11s
and such - The easiest place to get these from is dead RL02 drives,
since there are two off them on the back of each drive.  Does anyone
have a loose one to sell?

Also as mentioned from time to time, the part number seems to be
obscure and buried, but it's a component in a C-AD-7012415-0-0
"transition bracket assembly", which appears to be this 40-pin ZIF
connector attacked to a rack-mountable metal bracket.  All he needs is
the plastic bit, but if it comes attached to a bracket, then that's OK
too.

Yes, I know we can get him operational with a long 40-pin cable.  I'd
just like to replace the one missing bit.

Thanks!

-ethan

Re: DEC RRD40 CD-Rom Drive caddy

[Peter Coghlan]

>
> Greetings
>
> The DEC RRD40 CD-ROM drive requires a DEC caddy to insert and remove CD's from
> the drive.  Does anyone have a spare caddy they could sell/post to me?
>

Hi Brendan,

I have a few but where I am is just about the furthest anyone can get from New
Zealand without leaving the planet.  Let me know if you don't find any closer
to you.

Regards,
Peter Coghlan.

Re: VMS stability back in the day (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[steven]

Swift said:
> I think VMS is neat.

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 (^_^)

Steve.

Re: VMS stability back in the day (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[Ethan Dicks]

On Thu, Jul 14, 2016 at 4:50 PM, Swift Griggs  wrote:
> Big Fat Disclaimer: I know very little about VMS. I'm a UNIX zealot.
>
> I work with a lot of VMS experts and being around them has taught me a lot
> more about it than I ever thought to learn
> ... I don't see any point in "UNIX vs VMS" which I gather was a big
> bruhaha back in the 1990s.

It was a huge deal in the late 80s and into the 90s.  I was on both
sides, so mostly, I watched.

I got my start with VMS a few months before I touched UNIX - same
hardware - VAX-11/750.  I've written device drivers, system utilities,
and application code for both.  VMS was very good to me from
1984-1994, and I did a bit more with it from 1997-2003, then nothing
commercially since then.  UNIX (and by extension Linux) has been good
to me the entire time since 1985.  If I have choice, I'll grab
something UNIXy to do my work on - I'm not particular as to flavor.

> HOWEVER...
>
> Personally, given the mess of MultiNet, TCP/IP Services, and TCPWare, I
> wouldn't make that statement about networking *at all*. However, maybe you
> are talking about DECnet. I don't know much about DECnet except that it's
> very proprietary and it's got a bunch of "phases" (versions) that are
> radically different. Some are super-simple and not even routable, and
> others are almost as nasty as an OSI protocol stack.

I think TCP networking on VMS is a bit of a bodge, but back when I
used it every day in the 1980s, we didn't _have_ any Ethernet
interfaces in the entire company - *everything* we did was via sync
and async serial.  How well do you think it would go if all you had
was SLIP and PPP?  We did a lot.  Yes, other people had high-speed
networking and VAX clusters, etc.  We did not.  Not even our VAXen
running UNIX.  All serial, all day.  We still got a lot done.

>> But having used VMS (as a student), the command line *sucked* (except
>> for the help facility---that blows the Unix man command out of the
>> water).

I found certain aspects of DCL to be quirky, even if I did learn it
before I touched a UNIX shell.  That said, it was easier (to me) to
write full-on apps and utilities in DCL than sh or csh.  It would be a
fairer comparison to develop a complex app in Perl vs DCL (Perl would
win, but it has a lot going for it).  I even completely automated our
build process (formerly a full-time engineer's job, but as the company
shrank, we couldn't afford to have someone who was, essentially just a
build master)... source code control, pulling code based on which
product it was for, compiling it (without "make"), linking it locally,
sending the objects over to a machine running another version of VMS,
linking it there, pulling all the text objects and executables into
two tape-build repositories and cutting magtape for distribution - all
in DCL.  I literally turned a fulltime job into a script.  All you had
to type was "$ RELEASE  " and it would pull
everything, auto-increment the version number, inject it into the
code, build everything and tell you it was time to make tapes (8 hours
later!)

I'm sure it's possible to do all of that in csh, but even now, I
wouldn't want to be the one to build that.

> The DCL command line is very foreign to me. I've seen people rave about
> how regular and predictable things are in DCL, and I've seen some evidence
> of that. I've also seen some spot-on criticisms of DCL scripting vis-a-vis
> shell scripting and that's also accurate.

The regularity and predictability of args and options is definitely a
strength in DCL.  Args are entire words, not letters which change from
app to app.  Here's a trivia question: which letters are _not_ valid
arguments to 'ls'?  I know one off the top of my head but not the
others.  Next thing - how about those args to 'dd'?  Crazy.  Now how
about 'tar'... etc., etc.  I use this stuff every day, but I have
internalized a massive amount of UNIX trivia to be able to do so.  VMS
requires far less random factoid knowledge to get stuff done on the
command line.  There's a system command line parser, and it helps with
the consistency.

VMS HELP is also awesome.  I use man pages - they are good if you
already know how things work and are just trying to remember is it
'-p' here, or '-a' or what?

> Strengths versus Unix:
>  * More granular authentication/authorization system built in from very
>early days I'm told. "capabilities" style access control, too.

Much stronger.  There are dozens of privileges you can grant so
someone can do their job and not overstep things.  UNIX says, "all or
nothing.  Don't screw up."

[ other strengths deleted for brevity ]

> Downsides versus Unix:
>
>  * There is a lot of software ported to VMS, but a lot still missing too.
>Open source projects often lag by years. It's all volunteers

There was DECUS back in the day - a very strong source of sharable
software going back well over a decade before there was any VMS.
Consequently, there was less freeware available via Usenet.

OTOH, I