Gone but not forgotten part one - VAX/VMS

David M Williams
Thursday, 20 August 2009 18:24

Opinion and Analysis

The Computer Science department alone possessed a UNIX machine, a Gould, and we were to use it from second year. There was no hand-holding and no course in UNIX itself. It was purely the environment we were expected to use to achieve our real assessable goals.

Armed with a wonderful tome from McGraw Hill I learned UNIX and its zanily-named commands which stood in stark contrast to the rigid consistency of the VMS structure.

In the arrogance of youth I developed an elitist view that the VAX was a system for the hoi polloi, while my esoteric UNIX and its hacker-filled attractions was the way of the future.

I suppose I was right in a way, with many a VAX being replaced with UNIX systems over the following decade.

I landed my first full-time job during my final year exams and I began working in an aluminium smelter's automation department in December 1992.

The choice of platform was the VAX and I was reunited with the system I had neglected despite having given me such pleasure only five years prior.

I made command-line scripts to implement my favourite UNIX instructions - things like cd and ls and w and make.

The smelter acquired some Ultrix systems - DECs UNIX implementation - which integrated with SCADA systems and provided real-time trending of important plant data. I naturally gravitated towards these and became their administrator.

In 1994 I left the smelter and took my second job, back at my alma mater as a UNIX systems administrator, the UNIX revolution having begun.

I never laid hands on a VAX again – at least not to maintain one. I was one of a small team who ported the University’s general populace from VMS to Solaris.

Yet, looking back, I often think I'd like to see a VAX just one more time.

I don't know if it is the memories of a simpler time, the attraction of youth, or maybe even the feeling of embarrassment now and then when I look back at how little I really knew in my first ever job and what a different performance I’d give now.

Whatever the reason I've often mused I'd love to see a VAX again, to feel that VT220 keyboard, to delimit directory names with square brackets, to script in DCL again.

What do you think? What are some of your early computing memories? What would you like to see again? Tomorrow I’ll tell you another of mine.