{"id":252,"date":"2012-05-24T17:16:08","date_gmt":"2012-05-24T15:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.prunk.si\/?p=252"},"modified":"2012-05-24T17:19:09","modified_gmt":"2012-05-24T15:19:09","slug":"vax-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.janprunk.com\/?p=252","title":{"rendered":"VAX revival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am into <a title=\"Retrocomputing\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Retro_computing\" target=\"_blank\">Retrocomputing<\/a>. Recently I took an interest in searching for available GNU\/Linux distribution for <a title=\"VAX\" href=\"http:\/\/www.vax.si\/\" target=\"_blank\">VAX<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0systems.\u00c2\u00a0VAX was an <a title=\"Instruction set architecture\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Instruction_set_architecture\">instruction set architecture<\/a> (ISA) developed by <a title=\"Digital Equipment Corporation\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Digital_Equipment_Corporation\">Digital Equipment Corporation<\/a> (DEC) in the mid-1970s. A <a title=\"32-bit\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/32-bit\">32-bit<\/a> <a title=\"Complex instruction set computer\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Complex_instruction_set_computer\">complex instruction set computer<\/a> (CISC) ISA, it was designed to extend or replace DEC&#8217;s various <a title=\"Programmed Data Processor\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Programmed_Data_Processor\">Programmed Data Processor<\/a> (PDP) ISAs. The VAX name was also used by DEC for a family of <a title=\"Computer\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Computer\">computer<\/a>systems based on this processor architecture. The &#8220;native&#8221; VAX <a title=\"Operating system\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Operating_system\">operating system<\/a> is DEC&#8217;s <a title=\"OpenVMS\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/OpenVMS\">VAX\/VMS<\/a> (renamed to <em>OpenVMS<\/em> in 1991 or 1992 when it was ported to <a title=\"DEC Alpha\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/DEC_Alpha\">Alpha<\/a>, &#8220;branded&#8221; by the X\/Open consortium, and modified to comply with <a title=\"POSIX\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/POSIX\">POSIX<\/a> standards<sup id=\"cite_ref-vaxvmsat20_2-0\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/VAX#cite_note-vaxvmsat20-2\">[3]<\/a><\/sup>). The VAX architecture and VMS operating system were <a title=\"Concurrent Engineering\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Concurrent_Engineering#Concurrent_engineering_workflow\">&#8220;engineered concurrently&#8221;<\/a> to take maximum advantage of each other, as was the initial implementation of the <a title=\"VMScluster\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/VMScluster\">VAXcluster<\/a> facility. Other VAX operating systems have included various releases of <a title=\"Berkeley Software Distribution\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Berkeley_Software_Distribution\">BSD UNIX<\/a> up to <a title=\"4.3BSD\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/4.3BSD\">4.3BSD<\/a>, <a title=\"Ultrix\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ultrix\">Ultrix<\/a>-32, <a title=\"VAXELN\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/VAXELN\">VAXELN<\/a> and <a title=\"Xinu\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Xinu\">Xinu<\/a>. More recently, <a title=\"NetBSD\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/NetBSD\">NetBSD<\/a> and <a title=\"OpenBSD\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/OpenBSD\">OpenBSD<\/a> support various VAX models and some work has been done on porting <a title=\"GNU\/Linux\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/GNU\/Linux\">GNU\/Linux<\/a> to the VAX architecture. While Open\/NetBSD have a pretty\u00c2\u00a0mature VAX port, the GNU\/Linux port for it was already made back in 1999 and it provided the basic toolset to boot up some systems. According to the <a title=\"Linux Vax\" href=\"http:\/\/linux-vax.sf.net\" target=\"_blank\">Linux-Vax<\/a> website, the project seemed to have stalled at around 2005, but I was able to contact the original developers which expressed the wish to continue with the port, trying to make it usefull to boot with recent 3.x kernels. I own the VAX 4000\/200 server which is still loaded with the original VMS system and was once used at Slovenijales (The big company in Yugoslavia which exported\/imported furniture) but I am looking forward to update it to use GNU\/Linux. If you happen to be a VAX enthusiast (very unlikely) you are most welcome to contribute to our revival, we will have a public WIKI, Mailing list and GIT\/CVS access.\u00c2\u00a0Follow my <a title=\"VAX\" href=\"http:\/\/www.vax.si\" target=\"_blank\">VAX<\/a> related website for any updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am into Retrocomputing. Recently I took an interest in searching for available GNU\/Linux distribution for VAX\u00c2\u00a0systems.\u00c2\u00a0VAX was an instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the mid-1970s. A 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) ISA, it was designed to extend or replace DEC&#8217;s various Programmed Data Processor (PDP) ISAs. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.janprunk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.janprunk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.janprunk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.janprunk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.janprunk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.janprunk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254,"href":"https:\/\/blog.janprunk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.janprunk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.janprunk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.janprunk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}