Well I must say that the email from HPE at 07:09 this morning didn't initially phase me given that I almost brace myself when renewing the licences, wondering if the website still exists and someone there is still listening. An hour later however, and I appear to be dwelling on it and it has certain knocked the wind out of my sails, curbed my enthusiasm, etc.. What a downer. VSI do appear to have a hobbyist programme of sorts - they offer a packaged FreeAXP and OpenVMS installation for Windows with a very limited licence lifetime it seems. There's no mention of VAX. I'm not at all hopeful that there'll be any improvement..... and going down "other routes" is not the point. I had (note the tense) plans to buy a real Alpha of some description. Think I'll try for an authentic Altair 8080 or the Imsai clone. (That statement may or may not be truthful) I'm going to the gym. I may feel better later... or at least too tired to care for a while. Keith From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Rob Jarratt Sent: 07 March 2020 07:31 To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE Subject: RE: [HECnet] HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing Having said that, I suppose the hobbyist program might be revived by VSI. I seem to remember them once saying that they would have a hobbyist program, but I have not heard anything more about that since. From: Rob Jarratt <robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com<mailto:robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com>> Sent: 07 March 2020 07:15 To: 'hecnet at Update.UU.SE' <hecnet at Update.UU.SE<mailto:hecnet at Update.UU.SE>> Subject: RE: [HECnet] HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing It would be nice if the final licenses they issued were non-expiring. From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE<mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE> <owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE<mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE>> On Behalf Of David Moylan Sent: 07 March 2020 05:26 To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE<mailto:hecnet at Update.UU.SE> Subject: RE: [HECnet] HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing I've just received an update from the OpenVMS Customer lab: Here's the message from the OpenVMS team. The idea was that hobbyists would visit the site and renew their licenses, and in response, we would provide the final set of licenses, explaining the scenario: =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= As we approach the end of the HPE OpenVMS V8.4 standard support period, HPE plans to conclude the HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program. The HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist licenses we are issuing in 2020 will be the last set. Subsequently, HPE will not issue new HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist licenses. Attached is the final set of the HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist licenses. These final licenses are valid through December 31st, 2021. We hope that this additional validity period will enable users to plan for the future. Users who wish to avail of HPE OpenVMS long term licenses are encouraged to purchase permanent licenses at standard prices. You may contact [Fellman, Jon] <jon.fellman at hpe.com<mailto:jon.fellman at hpe.com>> for the same. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Cheers, Wiz!! From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE<mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE> [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of David Moylan Sent: Saturday, 7 March 2020 4:14 PM To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE<mailto:hecnet at Update.UU.SE> Subject: [HECnet] HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing Hi all, Just received the e-mail below. I've hunted around all the various Hobbyist locations and licensing pages and can't find any additional information. I've already replied back to ask what the impact of Hobbyist renewal licensing will be. I have no further information at this stage. Have others received this as well? Does anyone have any further knowledge on this? I can see a few people have forwarded/posted the same message on comp.os.vms. Cheers, Wiz!! From: OpenVMS Customer Lab [mailto:openvmscustomerlab at hpe.com] Sent: Saturday, 7 March 2020 3:13 PM Cc: OpenVMS Customer Lab Subject: OpenVMS Hobbyist Notification Dear HPE OpenVMS hobbyist, This is to inform you that HPE is concluding the HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program in alignment with the HPE OpenVMS support roadmap. If you wish to understand more details, please reach out to us at the earliest through the usual license renewal webpage. Thank you. HPE OpenVMS team

VAX/VMS 4.x runs on the MicroVAX-III. I booted it once on my KA-650, when I got it. Then when I went to back it up, the RD53 died. Zane

Andy Hoffman's 4.7 distribution is very nice. I was also pointed to CMUTEK TCPIP for it on ALDUR:: and the result is a perfectly usable VMS system with DECnet and TCPIP. The only thing I will miss is the PIPE command in DCL. And I will have to write some sort of a web-server for it which would be fun. https://comp.os.vms.narkive.com/yNP60hHs/vax-vms-4-7-distribution-available… On 3/7/20 11:45 AM, William Pechter wrote: -- Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT 39.19151 N, 77.23432 W QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet

Dave, On 3/7/20 1:07 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: CMUIP066 is at ALDUR::DISK$OLD_USERS:[DECUS.VMSLT98B.CMU.VMS-V5] Looks like I dumped my install session at https://supratim-sanyal.blogspot.com/2019/03/cmu-tcpip-vax-vms-4.7.html BTW is it a fair assumption Process Software's MULTINET hobbyist licenses will also dry up? Regards, Supratim

Well they ask for the checksum of the OpenVMS hobbyist license in their online application form for MULTINET hobbyist license ...

Hello! I saw that blurb about HPE shutting things down, and thought of something revolting. However both of those 4,.x distributions look nice except for one problem. Dropbox and I do not get along. It expected me to create a free account and promptly shuffle the contents from those to mine. I just don't trust the site. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." On Sat, Mar 7, 2020 at 1:54 PM Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:

I looked back at CMUTEK TCP/IP and discovered the multithreaded NNTP server I wrote for ANU-NEWS under VAX/VMS... over 30 years ago. The DCL archive file is still there and still extracts. Despite it being written in C, the interface to CMU's TCP/IP is wonderfully $QIO-based. It still pleasantly surprises me how easy it is/was to fire off a whole load of $QIOs with an AST routine reference and parameter, or a mailbox and just wait around for things to happen. Someone subsequently modified it (and added better error handling from what I remember) to work with UCX. Keith -----Original Message----- From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Timothy Stark Sent: 08 March 2020 00:19 To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE Subject: RE: [HECnet] HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing Yeah. I was able find CMUIP066 and CMUIP063 on ALDUR:: Thanks for information. -----Original Message----- From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE <owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE> On Behalf Of Dave McGuire Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2020 1:22 PM To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE Subject: Re: [HECnet] HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing On 3/7/20 1:16 PM, Supratim Sanyal wrote: Great. Thanks! Yes I did find that. Thank you for posting it. I don't see why they would..? -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

We always thought that the VMS asynchronous $QIO interface was a real winner.? Except for special JSYI (DUMPI%/DUMPO%) for magnetic tape I/O and certain cases of disk transfers, _all_ I/O in Tops-20 is synchronous (blocking).? You get put to sleep and you don't come back until the data is in your address space (unless you take an interrupt). The way you handle asynchronicity is to have a separate fork for data transfers.? It can be a challenge to orchestrate data done; we don't have P() and V(), but rather something of a queuing paradigm.? The Extended Mode FTP server on Tops-20 has this model; a top-level fork for the control channel and a lower for for the data channel.? Tops-10 has more flexibility in that regard; all I/O is asynchronous (it has to be, given the job structure). On 3/8/20 10:25 AM, Keith Halewood wrote:

Gee wiz, that stinks.? Lose anything?? Any chance of recovery? (I'm not familiar with the RD53).? No matter how long it takes, we always seem to learn, 'do regular backups' the (unexpected) hard way.? Two anecdotes (from actual experience): * A crashed disk will always take down at least two or more disk drives and at least one other disk because it will be put into a working drive to determine if it or the original drive has failed, this crashes the head assembly on the 'test' drive which then ruins the working media that had been taken out. * Unless both performed regularly _and_ verified regularly, backups, won't. * A tape drive will always break just before signs of disk failure.? This is why you must have two tape drives. I was in the machine room one day assisting our systems assurance folks in banging down some lines for another DH11 (we were getting some 'ringing' at higher speeds).? I happened to notice that one of our TU45's was doing a 'strange' amount of rewrites on a particular tape.? Closer inspection revealed that it was the previous evening's incremental backup.? Started (automatically) at 2:00 AM, it still hadn't finished by Noon, more than twice the usual time. I first thought to abort and re-queue the backup and give the drive a good cleaning (and maybe a chance to catch its breath). Once I had done the re-queue, I looked at the tape and noticed it was over 4 years old and seen regular bi-weekly service for all that time.? A TU55 DECtape will laugh at that kind of usage; they used to test the redundancy logic by un-spooling them and driving a car over the media.? Not so 1600 BPI magtape. That day, we started rotating all our backup tapes out for new ones.? That took about two months (12 tapes for daily bi-weekly incrementals, 30 for bi-weekly full and another 30 for bi-monthly fulls).? I kept wondering what was going to break before we finished the rotation, but incredibly, nothing did. It must have known I was watching... To this day, the 20's have quarterly batch backup, one backs up to another.? Other systems backup to OneDrive.