The comparison wouldn’t be fair to NT. VMS systems with GUI
interfaces (ie. VAXStations and AlphaStations) also have VERY
impressive reliability.
Actually there were X-Windows terminals that could be used
to access VMS systems that were NOT workstations with a GUI
interface.
HOWEVER, VMS workstations don’t support the wide range of graphics
cards. In fact, they support a very limited number and there were
just a few 3rd party companies that had other hardware for them,
such as Intergraph who was doing very fancy graphics on VMS in
the early 80s.
I’m sure that if they supported all the 3rd party cards NT does
with the kind of people writing drivers for them that write NT
drivers, VMS would NOT have been as stable as it was.
VMS GUIs were typically mostly usermode software and that helps.
Some of UIS (the first workstation GUI) was in the kernel, but most
of it was not. Almost all of Motif is usermode code. This has to
make a difference and therefore, NT should get a bit of a pass.
Rick…
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Barila, Phil
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 2:51 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: FW: RE: Beginner looking for help
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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