OpenVMS was designed entirely within Compaq (Digital Equipment Corporation.) The principal designers were Dave Cutler and Dick Hustvedt. OpenVMS was conceived as a 32-bit, virtual memory successor to Digital's RSX-11M operating system for the PDP-11. Many of the original designers and programmers of OpenVMS had worked previously on RSX-11M, and many concepts from RSX-11M were carried over to OpenVMS.
OpenVMS VAX is a 32-bit, multitasking, multiprocessing virtual memory operating system. Current implementations run on VAX systems from Compaq and other vendors.
OpenVMS Alpha is a 64-bit multitasking, multiprocessing virtual memory operating system. Current implementations run on Alpha systems from Compaq and other vendors.
[Paul Winalski]
[Arne Vajhøj]
For more details on OpenVMS and its features, read the OpenVMS Software
Product Description at:
http://www.compaq.com/info/spd/Additional information on the general features of various OpenVMS releases, release dates, as well as the development project code names of specific releases, is available at:
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/os/openvms-release-history.htmlAdditional historical information - as well as pictures and a variety of other trivia - is available in the VAX 20th anniversary book:
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/20th/vmsbook.pdfFor information on the FreeVMS project (also see the related software licensing topics VMS9, VMS16), see:
http://www.freevms.org/
What became confusing is that the OpenVMS name was introduced first for OpenVMS AXP V1.0 causing the widespread misimpression that OpenVMS was for Alpha AXP only, while "regular VMS" was for VAX. In fact, Digital officially changed the name of the VAX operating system as of V5.5, though the name did not start to be actually used in the product until V6.0.
The proper names for OpenVMS on the two platforms are now "OpenVMS VAX" and "OpenVMS Alpha", the latter having superseded "OpenVMS AXP".
[Arne Vajhøj]
[leichter@lrw.com]
Seriously, OpenVMS and the better implementations of UNIX are all fine
operating systems, each with its strengths and weaknesses. If you're
in a position where you need to choose, select the one that best fits
your own requirements, considering, for example, whether or not the
layered products or specific OS features you want are available.
[Steve Lionel]
Active development of new OpenVMS releases is underway, as well as the continuation of support.
Please see the following URLs for details, roadmaps, and related information:
http://www.compaq.com/openvms/ http://www.openvms.compaq.com/OPENVMS/strategy.html http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/roadmap/openvms_roadmaps.htm http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvmstimes/ http://www.compaq.com/inform/
For information on the available part numbers and current products (OpenVMS distribution kits, media, documentation, etc) and associated licensing information, please see the OpenVMS Software Product Description (SPD), available at:
http://www.compaq.com/info/spd/OpenVMS typically uses SPD 25.01.xx and/or SPD 41.87.xx.
The following CD-ROMs contain just the OpenVMS Alpha operating system. These are bootable, and can be used to run BACKUP from CD-ROM.
The following are the consolidated ECO distribution kit subscriptions, and these provide sites with eight updates of the current ECO kits per year:
OpenVMS VAX and OpenVMS Alpha source listings CD-ROM sets include the source listings of most of OpenVMS, and these CD-ROM sets are invaluable for any folks working directly with OpenVMS internals, as well as folks interested in seeing examples of various programming interfaces.
In no particular order, OpenVMS components are implemented using Bliss, Macro,Ada, PLI, VAX and DEC C, Fortran, UIL, VAX and Alpha SDL, Pascal, MDL, DEC C++, DCL, Message, and Document. And this is certainly not a complete list. However, the rumor is not true that an attempt was made to write pieces of OpenVMS in every supported language so that the Run-Time Libraries could not be unbundled. (APL, BASIC, COBOL and RPG are just some of the languages not represented!)
There are a large variety of small and not-so-small tools and DCL command procedures that are used as part of the OpenVMS build, and a source code control system capable of maintaining over a hundred thousand source files across multiple parallel development projects, and overlapping releases.
If you are a DECUS member and are considering acquiring and using a VAX or Alpha system for hobbyist (non-commercial) use, (free) licenses for OpenVMS VAX and OpenVMS Alpha are available to DECUS members. In addition to the license, VAX and Alpha distribution CD-ROM kits are available with OpenVMS, DECwindows Motif, DECnet and TCP/IP networking, compilers, a variety of layered products.
For further information, link to:
http://www.montagar.com/hobbyist/Further information on DECUS and on DECUS membership is available at:
http://www.decus.org/For information on licenses for educational customers, see the Compaq CSLG license program and the OpenVMS Educational license program:
http://www.openvmsedu.com/To transfer a commercial OpenVMS license from one owner to another, or to purchase a commercial license, you can contact Compaq Computer Corporation at 1-800-DIGITAL (in North America), or your local or regional sales office. Commercial developers can join the CSA program, and can (potentially) receive discounts on various software product licenses and software distributions, as well as on hardware purchases. Please see VMS16.
[Stephen Hoffman]
[Scott Snadow]
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/euro/
Because there is a belief that there would be no market to justify the effort and the expense involved in porting OpenVMS to systems using the Intel IA32 architecture. (Each maintainer of a product or package for OpenVMS would have to justify the port to "OpenVMS IA32", akin to a port from OpenVMS VAX to OpenVMS Alpha. The effort involved in porting OpenVMS from VAX to Alpha was huge.)
Because every one of the core applications would have to be ported from Alpha to IA32, and then customer and third-party applications would also have to be ported.
Because there are design features that required by OpenVMS that are not available on IA32, features that would require redesigning OpenVMS to operate in the environment, making ports rather more difficult. ASTs and interlocked operators are obvious prerequirements.
Because Alpha is faster than Intel IA32 systems - if OpenVMS is to be ported, a port to a slower system is more difficult to sell.
Because Intel is expecting to replace IA32 processors with IA64.
Because hobbyists have been easily able to acquire OpenVMS systems and the DECUS hobbyist OpenVMS licenses.
Because OpenVMS already operates on Compaq and third-party Alpha systems; specific features in support of third-party vendor-customized bootstrap capabilities for use on third-party systems are present in OpenVMS Alpha V7.1-2 and later releases.
Because there are assumptions that some of the stability of OpenVMS arises from the stability of the underlying VAX and Alpha hardware, and systems based on components such as ISA and random memory SIMMs might not be as stable.
But yes, it would be nice to have.
[Stephen Hoffman]
If you would like an account on Hobbes, , please see the FAQ at:
http://www.hobbesthevax.com/
This system is strictly for non-commercial use.
[Scott Squires]
http://www.testdrive.compaq.com/galaxy/
http://www.testdrive.compaq.com/
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/supportchart.htmlFor information on the Multia, related Alpha single-board computers, or other officially unsupported systems, please see ALPHA8 and ALPHA13
The following is a rule-of-thumb for Alpha platform support.
The table contains the earliest OpenVMS Alpha release with
support for a particular series of Alpha microprocessors:
| Microprocessor Generation | OpenVMS Version | General Comments |
| 21064 EV4 | V1.0 | few systems; most EV4 req later; upg avail |
| 21164 EV5 | V6.2 | subsequent upg available |
| 21164A EV56 | V6.2-1H3 | subsequent upg to V7.1 and later |
| 21264 EV6 | V7.1-2 | subsequent upg typically to V7.2-1 or later |
| 21264A EV67 | V7.1-2 | subsequent upg typically to V7.2-1 or later |
| xxxxxx EV68 | V7.2-1 | believed/probable; currently expectation |
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/freeware/cd_guide.html
To order a Freeware CD-ROM kit, request part number QA-6KZAA-H8.
This section covers generic porting, and porting from OpenVMS VAX to OpenVMS Alpha. (Porting from OpenVMS VAX to OpenVMS Alpha is often quite simple and involves little more than rebuilding from source, though a few applications using features specific to VAX will require some additional effort to port.)
Several manuals on porting from OpenVMS VAX to OpenVMS Alpha are available in the OpenVMS documentation set, including information on porting VAX Macro32 assembler code to the Macro32 compiler on OpenVMS Alpha, on management differences, on upgrading privileged code, and application migration:
http://www.openvms.compaq.com:8000/
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/doc/
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/commercial/
Details on the C programming environment are available at:
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/commercial/c/c_index.html
Details on porting VAX C to Compaq C are are available at:
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/commercial/c/index_vax.htm
An OpenVMS Porting Library is available at:
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/products/ips/porting.html
Information on the Enterprise Toolkit, a Visual-based development
environment for developing applications for OpenVMS using a Microsoft
platform, is available at:
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/commercial/et/et_index.html
Details on DCE, CORBA, BridgeWorks, and COM/DCOM middleware is available at:
http://www.openvms.compaq.com/commercial/middleware.html
Information on the COE standards is available at:
http://diicoe.disa.mil/coe/
A wide variety of programming development tools and middleware are
available as commercial products (eg: DECset, IBM MQseries), and
various tools are also available as shareware or Freeware. Please
see other sections of this FAQ, and please see:
http://www.partner.compaq.com/www-catalog/
http://www.compaq.com/csa/
CSA provides members with discounts on hardware, porting assistance, and
many other benefits.
For those familiar with the program, the DIGITAL Association of Software and Application Parterns (ASAP) program has been incorporated into CSA.
The Compaq Solutions Alliance Technical Journal (CTJ) is "web-published" monthly, and available at:
http://csa.compaq.com/CompaqTechnicalJournal.html
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