[rescue] OpenVMS is officially End-of-Life

[Andrew Hoerter]

On 6/10/13, Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at gmail.com> wrote:

> So sad:
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/10/openvms_death_notice/
>
> Of course, this means I now have a great desire to run it on something...
> Are proper OS bits available for hobbyist use available? Any idea what
> suitable hardware is available reasonably-priced?

Hobbyist licenses were still available at least as of late last year,
when I renewed mine.  After you register you can request a link to
download CD images for your architecture of choice (these requests are
manually responded to -- but usually quickly).

Hobbyist registration:

<http://www.openvms.org/pages.php?page=Hobbyist>

You will need a user group membership ID, joining DECUServe is free of
charge and qualifies you.

Alpha hardware is overpriced on the used market, in my experience.
VAX doesn't run anything past VMS 7.3 or so, IIRC.  You might look
into an older Itanium system (rx1600 or rx2600), those seem to be
reasonably cheap.