OpenVMS

 

 

The OpenVMS hobbyist program

One of the first place to visit for everyone interested in running OpenVMS (one of the most wonderful operating systems ever! :-) ) at home, is the home of the OpenVMS hobbyist program. This program allows the hobbyist to get licenses for the operating system itself and a plethora of products for OpenVMS for hobbyist usage for free. So this is a wonderful way to get old VAX and Alpha hardware up and running again and the best way to spread the word of OpenVMS. :-)

Free accounts on FAFNER

If you just want to play a little bit with OpenVMS or want to port some software and do not want to bother with all the troubles involved with running a large VAX at home, you can get an account for free on FAFNER, a large VAX 7000/820 running OpenVMS 7.2. Of course this account may be removed if someone tries to tamper with FAFNER, spy out other people or intends or does other non-gentlemanlike things.

Here you can see FAFNER's current system status.

Thanks to HyperSPI++ you can see FAFNER's CPU/memory/disk statistics here


Ports to OpenVMS

A port of the great FFTW (the fastest fourier transform in the west) package for OpenVMS (VAX and Alpha), version 2.1.3. Click here to read the VMS readme for this package.
A simple port of a J interpreter from 1992. The interpreter is - although not quite up to date - very nice and a great way to get accustomed to the programming language J. If you would like to have a more modern version (which is unfortunately not available for OpenVMS) or information and documentation about J in general, please have a look at J-Software.

Miscellaneous tools

POP2VMSMAIL - a simple OpenVMS alternative to fetchmail. POP2VMSMAIL allows to fetch mail from POP-mailboxes and deliver it, using the VMS-MAIL system. Even return addresses are handled correctly so it is possible to simply REPLY to a mail (assuming that outgoing SMTP is setup correctly and working). POP2VMSMAIL was writting mainly by my friend (and Perl guru :-) ) Thomas Kratz who made the last changes during the 2004 DECUS symposium in Bonn.
A short command procedure to reset and restore the file attributes of OpenVMS backup savesets (which are normally damaged during an ftp and the like).

Documentation

The VMS Basic-Calling-Standard-Conventions, a short lecture held at the center for data processing (ZDV) of the University of Mainz (in German).
An Introduction to VMS (in German).
An introduction to the VMS-tools LSE, SCA and PCA: LSE, SCA und PCA - Eine Einfuehrung (in German).
Access to FAFNER's online HELP system.

 

 

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