FW: RE: Beginner looking for help

NTDEV
1

Starting with the VAXStation-I in approx 1983, you had a full on
GUI workstation. Actually, graphical devices such as REGIS terminals
were supported practically, from the VERY beginning of VMS.

VMS has and still does support graphic devices. We were doing
graphics under VMS years before the IBM PC first showed up on the
scene. I remember working on some VMS graphics libraries for
Tektroinix in the late 1970s.

Rick Cadruvi…

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Barila, Phil
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 1:24 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Beginner looking for help

What video drivers? I haven’t done much on VMS, but every experience with
VAX I have ever had was all text mode on dumb terminals, there were no
graphics to drive. Did VMS support any pixel-based display?

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory G. Dyess [mailto:xxxxx@pdq.net]
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 12:35 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Beginner looking for help

I worked on VMS in the mid to late 80’s and I can tell you even then it was
by FAR more stable than NT/2000. Now granted, it didn’t have video drivers
embedded into the OS and it didn’t have as many 3rd party driver-writers
that broke the OS rules as NT does now. Downtime on VMS was measured in
seconds per year!

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Don Burn
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 2:09 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Beginner looking for help

Gregory G. Dyess wrote:

If you’re looking for another OS that’s close to NT, look into VMS. After
all, VMS was the foundation upon which Dave Cutler built NT. Too bad he
left the clean and stable parts behind!

Please DON"T LOOK AT VMS TO UNDERSTAND NT!
I was involved in a consult a few years back, where most
of the developers came from DEC’s VMS group. Even though
we had a working NT filesystem, they insisted it was wrong
because VMS didn’t work that way. I heard after I left they
did some major rewrites to correct things, all of which were
thrown out when it was discovered they didn’t work!

As far as the stability crack, VMS wasn’t stable in the early days, but VMS
is
now 25 years old. From what I can tell Microsoft is pushing Windows 2000/XP
to stability at a faster rate than DEC did in early 80’s.

Don Burn
Windows 2000 Device Driver and Filesystem consulting

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2

I had no idea, based on the (very) little experience I’ve had with VMS.

I kind of figured it has them by now, but I was referring to the same period
that Greg indicated. Based on your information, VMS did have GUI video
drivers even then. I think it would be interesting to compare the uptimes
of VAXen with GUIs, versus VAXen that had only a text mode console, both
using VMS.

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Cadruvi [mailto:xxxxx@rdperf.com]
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 2:28 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] FW: RE: Beginner looking for help

Starting with the VAXStation-I in approx 1983, you had a full on
GUI workstation. Actually, graphical devices such as REGIS terminals
were supported practically, from the VERY beginning of VMS.

VMS has and still does support graphic devices. We were doing
graphics under VMS years before the IBM PC first showed up on the
scene. I remember working on some VMS graphics libraries for
Tektroinix in the late 1970s.

Rick Cadruvi…

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Barila, Phil
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 1:24 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Beginner looking for help

What video drivers? I haven’t done much on VMS, but every experience with
VAX I have ever had was all text mode on dumb terminals, there were no
graphics to drive. Did VMS support any pixel-based display?

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory G. Dyess [mailto:xxxxx@pdq.net]
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 12:35 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Beginner looking for help

I worked on VMS in the mid to late 80’s and I can tell you even then it was
by FAR more stable than NT/2000. Now granted, it didn’t have video drivers
embedded into the OS and it didn’t have as many 3rd party driver-writers
that broke the OS rules as NT does now. Downtime on VMS was measured in
seconds per year!

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Don Burn
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 2:09 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Beginner looking for help

Gregory G. Dyess wrote:

If you’re looking for another OS that’s close to NT, look into VMS. After
all, VMS was the foundation upon which Dave Cutler built NT. Too bad he
left the clean and stable parts behind!

Please DON"T LOOK AT VMS TO UNDERSTAND NT!
I was involved in a consult a few years back, where most
of the developers came from DEC’s VMS group. Even though
we had a working NT filesystem, they insisted it was wrong
because VMS didn’t work that way. I heard after I left they
did some major rewrites to correct things, all of which were
thrown out when it was discovered they didn’t work!

As far as the stability crack, VMS wasn’t stable in the early days, but VMS
is
now 25 years old. From what I can tell Microsoft is pushing Windows 2000/XP
to stability at a faster rate than DEC did in early 80’s.

Don Burn
Windows 2000 Device Driver and Filesystem consulting

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3

VMS is a VERY good platform to learn internals about if you
want a good understanding of how NT sort of works internally.
The fact that the internals are readily available for VMS and
that David Cutler came from DEC having done RSX and VMS first,
makes it useful to understand VMS internals to help understand
how NT sort of works. (by the way, RSX and RSTS also had IRPs).

Absolutely, NT is different. However, the similarities are
greater than the differences at the Kernel of the OS.

Your problem is that you had the misfortune of doing a project
with former VMS Engineering people. Those people were typically
so arrogant and self-absorbed, that they probably did EXACTLY as
you have described.

I have done quite a few NT projects and I can tell you that my
intimate knowledge of VMS internals has served me VERY well.
In some areas NT is way better from an internals design viewpoint.
Disappointingly, some important VMS concepts didn’t make it into NT.

As to reliability. I have worked with VMS since pre-release V1.0
field test. I also have worked with lots of other OSes. VMS has
been the most stable of any I have worked with, almost from the
very beginning. If you want to know about stability, check out
the Irish Railway VMS cluster that has 17+ years of continuous
operation without the whole cluster being down ever.

I remember in the early 80s being shocked at the notion that large
scale computer systems weren’t up for months or years at a time
without a crash. My Unix experiences weren’t that good and my
Windows exerpiences (including several version of NT) have not been
either now some 20 years later. You won’t find NT running on many
(if any) truly critical systems where down time is NOT permitted.

In Microsoft’s defense, if VMS had to run on all the crappy hardware
and had as many 3rd party people who don’t understand basic OS
concepts writing device drivers for it as NT does, VMS would problably
not be very reliable either.

However, I think most software people coming from the PC arena,
including Microsoft, are willing to accept fairly high failure
rates thinking that a reboot (or even a rebuild) isn’t such a big
deal. Take the Code Red virus. The following URL about the worm
recommends rebuilding your infected systems:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/itsolutions/security/tools/redfix.asp

Keep in mind that a similar IIS hole in the printer extension came
up a while before CodeRed. Why wasn’t this fixed then? What hole
will be discovered later in the same vein with some other IIS
extension?

I suspect Digital/Compaq would have also made the fix available for more
versions of the OS. Microsoft requires SP1 or SP2 to be installed
first before installing the patch on Win2k. I have a system with too little
free space on the C drive to install the service pack. I haven’t wanted
to rebuild it and expand the C drive because of the hassle in saving
all the user files/email/bookmarks/whatever. Now I can’t use IIS because
I can’t install the service pack and then the patch.

In the VMS world, that level of failure and required upgrading just
wasn’t acceptable from our softare. On the other hand, our software
didn’t look NEAR as pretty.

Rick Cadruvi…

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Don Burn
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 12:09 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Beginner looking for help

Gregory G. Dyess wrote:

If you’re looking for another OS that’s close to NT, look into VMS. After
all, VMS was the foundation upon which Dave Cutler built NT. Too bad he
left the clean and stable parts behind!

Please DON"T LOOK AT VMS TO UNDERSTAND NT!
I was involved in a consult a few years back, where most
of the developers came from DEC’s VMS group. Even though
we had a working NT filesystem, they insisted it was wrong
because VMS didn’t work that way. I heard after I left they
did some major rewrites to correct things, all of which were
thrown out when it was discovered they didn’t work!

As far as the stability crack, VMS wasn’t stable in the early days, but VMS
is
now 25 years old. From what I can tell Microsoft is pushing Windows 2000/XP
to stability at a faster rate than DEC did in early 80’s.

Don Burn
Windows 2000 Device Driver and Filesystem consulting

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