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PIEBALDconsult4-Oct-21 3:31

PIEBALDconsult

4-Oct-21 3:31

OpenVMS user numbers.
Actually I guess I should confirm that that's still true.

Edit:

/UIC=value

     Specifies the user identification code (UIC). The UIC value is
     a group number in the range from 1 to 37776 (octal) and a member
     number in the range from 0 to 177776 (octal), which are separated
     by a comma and enclosed in brackets. Digital reserves group 1 and
     groups 300-377 for its own use.

modified 4-Oct-21 10:36am.

Mike Hankey4-Oct-21 3:55

4-Oct-21 3:55

No wonder DEC went under. Smile | :)

The less you need, the more you have.

Even a blind squirrel gets a nut...occasionally.

JaxCoder.com

charlieg4-Oct-21 3:59

4-Oct-21 3:59

Not quite accurate. DEC went under because the dinosaur management was actually threatened by an internal group's skunk works project called Alpha (RISC based architecture). Management felt threatened by Alpha (more money in big iron), so they did their best to kill it. Had they done with Alpha, Sun would have never existed.

Filed under: Adapt or Die

Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759

Mike Hankey4-Oct-21 4:02

4-Oct-21 4:02

I loved DEC equipment and while I programmed i worked exclusively with DEC equipment.

Was sorry to see them go.

The less you need, the more you have.

Even a blind squirrel gets a nut...occasionally.

JaxCoder.com

charlieg4-Oct-21 4:05

4-Oct-21 4:05

You and me both. I worked for them for 5 years. Toward the latter part of my time, the $$ issues and the lackadaisical attitude toward business issues was stunning. So much talent.

PIEBALDconsult4-Oct-21 4:15

PIEBALDconsult

4-Oct-21 4:15

Maybe you need to re-read the DEC Alpha history.

Two of my OpenVMS systems are Alpha.

charlieg4-Oct-21 4:19

4-Oct-21 4:19

I only know what I saw in the field (where I was). One of my co-workers would hit all the trade shows, and you could see the Sun people checking the heat output of the Alpha. They could not believe how cool it would run.

I worked at an Air Force base in a support role and lived through the terrible days of the VAX 9000 - let's go after IBM - fiasco. Simultaneously, the midrange systems (VAX 6xxx) kept getting faster and faster, and the software licensing model became a fiasco. The software upgrades were 2x the hardware costs.

My customers finally just gave up. If we had had the Alpha when it was first talking about in the company, I truly believe DEC would still be around.

markrlondon4-Oct-21 4:55

markrlondon

4-Oct-21 4:55

Well, Alpha wasn't completely ignored as I recall. At one time (and I do not presume to tell you stuff you already know) it was possible to buy Alpha-based PC motherboards and run NT4 on them (at the time NT4 was growing massively in popularity). I saw these motherboards and was hopeful for whole new ranges of new Alpha-based NT4 PCs, just like we saw ranges of x86 PCs.

But it didn't happen.

Like so many new technologies, I think it was the old chicken/egg problem. Alpha-based PCs weren't going to take off until there were drivers and application software compiled for Alpha, and no one was going to write NT4 drivers or compile their Windows application code for Alpha until there was a decent hardware base to make it worthwhile.

It seems to me that the very same problem put paid to MIPS and PowerPC NT4 versions and computers based upon them.

Emulation just wasn't fast enough in those days to solve the lack of applications problem, although I seem to recall that the non-x86 NT4 versions did include x86 emulation for apps.

It turned out that x86 hardware was simply good enough.

I wonder if greater Linux maturity would have allowed Alpha, MIPS or PowerPC to do better in the PC marketplace back then. I suspect not. Linux on IBM Power ISA is a thing now, of course, but it's still niche, despite attempts to popularise it.

charlieg4-Oct-21 10:37

4-Oct-21 10:37

True, it was not completely ignored. All I remember is having multiple customers panting for it. The writing was on the wall for the big systems - they were simply not sustainable given the potential performance offered by the new architecture. While all this crap was going on in DEC, Sun was executing it's RISC business plan, and HP was trying to figure out what to do with PA-RISC.

Meanwhile, a few people at Intel noticed that if they didn't start making their processors a hell of a lot faster, they were toast. And intel got to work - so yes, you are correct.

Today I support a DEC manufacturing system running on Charon VAX running on a Windows Server virtual machine. Go figure. Smile | :)

Bud Radcliffe5-Oct-21 1:37

Bud Radcliffe

5-Oct-21 1:37

Better question might be: who still uses OpenVMS😂?

Mike Hankey4-Oct-21 3:54

4-Oct-21 3:54

Interesting, I didn't think octal was used for anything.

The less you need, the more you have.

Even a blind squirrel gets a nut...occasionally.

JaxCoder.com

Mircea Neacsu4-Oct-21 4:44

Mircea Neacsu

4-Oct-21 4:44

Mike Hankey wrote:
didn't think octal was used for anything

Surely you ment "...anything else except the ubiquitous chmod command" Smile | :)

. After having arse bitten a few times one learns to avoid the number of the beast (666) and the number of the aircraft (777). 644 is golden.

Mircea

Mike Hankey4-Oct-21 4:45

4-Oct-21 4:45

Yep you're absolutely right, I had forgot about that.

The less you need, the more you have.

Even a blind squirrel gets a nut...occasionally.

JaxCoder.com

Richard MacCutchan4-Oct-21 4:03

Richard MacCutchan

4-Oct-21 4:03

I spent a number of years working on UNIVAC systems which used octal extensively. Reading a 500 page system dump printout all in octal was one of the highlights of my early career.

And the reason I needed to wear glasses in my 20s rather than 40s.

Greg Utas4-Oct-21 4:35

Greg Utas

4-Oct-21 4:35

Upvoted because I didn't know whether to give you a trophy, a rose, or just laugh insanely.

Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

Richard MacCutchan4-Oct-21 4:54

Richard MacCutchan

4-Oct-21 4:54

I think option three would be best. Roll eyes | :rolleyes:

Greg Utas4-Oct-21 5:14

Greg Utas

4-Oct-21 5:14

OK...

Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

Chris C-B4-Oct-21 5:55

Chris C-B

4-Oct-21 5:55

I used to use octal - a couple of EL34 jobs plugged in nicely in a push pull circuit for my student days power amp.

Oh - wait a minute - is that not what we're talking about? Laugh | :laugh:

Peter_in_27804-Oct-21 20:00

Peter_in_2780

4-Oct-21 20:00

Wow. I've worked in Firefighting Aviation Comms for 15+ years, familiar with the use of Squawk Codes (Transponder codes) and still remember 7600 (lost radio comms) and 7700 (emergency). I just never noticed the lack of 8s and 9s. But now 76 and 77 make a bit more sense (and more likely to stick in this aged nerd brain).

On a different note, I recently saw an update arrive for a python library. It seems that leading zeroes would stuff up its parsing of dotted decimal IP4 addresses. :facepalm:

Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012

Microsoft, you're on a roll.... Teams

PIEBALDconsult5-Oct-21 2:58

PIEBALDconsult

5-Oct-21 2:58

Peter_in_2780 wrote:
leading zeroes would stuff up its parsing of dotted decimal IP4 addresses.

Surely you mean dotted-octal.

A few years ago I was asked to look into some problems we were having with IPv4 address parsing. There were data quality issues with incoming feeds, such as missing dots and the occasional leading zero. I had to educate my colleagues as to why the behavior of the parser was correct.

charlieg4-Oct-21 2:28