[rescue] OpenVMS is officially End-of-Life

[mc68010]

On 6/11/2013 6:13 PM, alex at lava-net.com wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 04:23:21PM -0700, mc68010 wrote:
>> On 6/10/2013 3:50 PM, Andrew Hoerter wrote:
>>> 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.
>> The Alpha servers go pretty cheap. It's really just the workstation
>> that go for crazy money. There are companies still supporting them
>> in the field that buy them all up on ebay for big money. Some of the
>> later Alphastations can fetch well over $1,000.
>>
> Define "pretty cheap"...I've been trying to dig up an alpha box for
> almost 10 years now, and have always been put off by the insane prices
> they fetch...Closest I ever came was a couple of PWS500AUs I got to play
> with briefly in college.
>

Cheap is obviously relative. The thing is really the shipping. You can 
get them for under $100 and sometimes free. Thing is if it isn't near 
you you're going to spend more in shipping. A lot of the rack mount 
Alpha stuff has to go freight if you can't pick it up.

The older Alpha DEC 3000 go pretty cheap too since the VARs aren't 
interested in them. There was one on ebay for $149 with free shipping 
for a long time. You can get them cheaper if you watch ebay.  There are 
also the Multia and other PC type Alpha motherboards. They will run 
OpenVMS with some messing around although not the latest. You need to 
make sure it will run vms before you buy one though. Some don't at all.