The return of OpenVMS

[altivo]

Spent a good chunk of the day crawling under desks in cramped space here in my study. I'm switching the Alpha back to running OpenVMS full time instead of Linux. Unfortunately, that's a bit more complex than it ought to be. Because I couldn't get XDMCP to work properly between a Linux X-terminal and OpenVMS client desktop, it was necessary to swap display cards in the Alpha.

Kinda disappointing, really. HP has continued to update OpenVMS every year or two (now on release 8.3) but never updates the video drivers. Consequently, the XWindows only works with really antiquated PCI VGA cards that haven't been made for 15 or 20 years. If they'd just put a VESA driver or a frame buffer in, the OS would be compatible with most modern display devices, but no, they only support a handful of antiques. Linux, meanwhile, has gradually dropped support for most of those old cards (Elsa Gloria Synergy, for instance, or S3 Trio64.) Because VMS users still need these old cards, they sell for really high prices.

VMS is otherwise a very up to date OS. Batch queues, full TCPIP features and security, terrific throughput, and (if you can figure out how it works) a feature that allows running many Windows NT/2000/XP applications. A full complement of language compilers and interpreters from Fortran to C++, PostScript, etc.

So I swapped out the Matrox and put the S3 Trio back into the machine, then spent an hour reconfiguring the display features so they would work properly. Booted back to Linux because it still has a SETI@Home work unit to complete, and found it complaining about the card substitution so had to reconfigure the display setup there as well. Debian now has a text only console on the Alpha, but I can use my Dell as an X-Terminal to get the full GUI on Alpha Debian if I need to. When OpenVMS is running, the HP common desktop environment (essentially Motif) runs on the Alpha console directly.

A friend came to haul away a pickup truck full of sheep poop for his vegetables just at sunset today. I was in the middle of cooking dinner, but Gary helped him load up. I haven't been out to look yet, but the sheep probably have a "bi-level" pen now.

Comments

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I remember having an S3 trio, it was an excellent card indeed.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The S3 cards work, provided there is a proper driver for them. The way in which they work is apparently quite different from the "modern" designs. Somewhere along the way from the 90s, various functions were dropped from the S3 drivers in Linux by someone who thought they were "obsolete." Now the S3 driver no longer works with Linux on older equipment, especially non-Intel designs. It's only good for drawing colored confetti on the screen.

I have two cards with S3 chipsets on them, and neither works with Linux on the Alpha. I have two Matrox cards, both of which work well with Linux, but unlike the S3, they are completely unrecognized by OpenVMS. I plan to install Windows NT on the Alpha as a third OS, and expect to find that it recognizes and works with all of these cards. Microsoft had and has such control over the marketplace that nothing could be marketed unless it worked with Windoze.