[HECnet] Hello

On Jul 17, 2015, at 11:59 PM, Hans Vlems <hvlems at zonnet.nl> wrote: Good morning Chris, welcome to this list. It's across the globe, I'm in the Netherlands. ?As others already suggested, the quickest way to get started is with a simulator. VMS has an active hobbyist program and HP issues licenses and operating system kits as well as compilers. VMS runs on three platforms and though I love the VAX if you're looking for real hardware go for a cheap Alpha. Even an rx2600 itanium is cheap these days. Why, well VAX hardware is showing its age in terms of performance and VMS was frozen at V7.3. Itanium and alpha run VMS V8.4 and that runs? fast and offers reasonably current software to run on. You can run simh and emulate a VAX on alpha/vms too :-) Hans Verzonden vanaf mijn BlackBerry 10-smartphone. Van: Chris Kurowicki Verzonden: zaterdag 18 juli 2015 05:43 Aan: hecnet at Update.UU.SE Beantwoorden: hecnet at Update.UU.SE Onderwerp: Re: [HECnet] Hello I've read a bit about simh, the general opinion seems to be that that is the place to start. I do have some space. Problem is I already have a decent setup of machines, it's on my blog, but I have an 18U enclosure with a few things mounted up, maybe 6U left over. I don't think that'll help with a miniVAX, though. I've considered a VAXstation, there was a 3100 on E-bay for $80 that looked promising. For now I'm getting my LCII going again ("new" hard drive the way. The darn thing failed immediately after I installed System 7.5.5 from a set of floppy's, go figure). I need to focus on one thing at a time, but the VAX world definitely has my interest. I have a microVAX handbook from '84 on the way to me from E-bay land to read over. Anyway, to answer your question, I'm in Portland, OR. Recent(ish) transplant from Michigan. Oh, I didn't notice at first! Ian McLaughlin is the one who "sent me" here. Thanks! -- Christopher G. Kurowicki M.S. Information Assurance www.tauceti.org