[Simh] Off topic: ULTRIX question

[Clement T. Cole]

Open or Net BSD are likely to be you best bets on an Alpha and I can see advantages to each. As Johnny said NET is likely to be your best bet on a VAX.  An issue with any of these will be limited to the GNU development suite [which also has pulses and minuses].  One thing I very much wonder is if those projects are tracking and testing anything other than C/C++.  

For a commercial Unix for Alpha Tru64 is the only game in town. I have an DS10 in my basement awaiting time to load it. Which should be similar to what was on my desk years ago.  But as others have noted, getting distribution CDs is difficult. The advantage  is that development suite is the DEC GEM suite and you mention wanting to run Fortran.  Tru64 with DEC FTN to likely to be more satisfactory than gnu fortran -- lwhich I'm not sure even exits for alpha in much of a form. It's true that Current version of gnu fortran >>is<< better than version that was on the DEC unsupported tapes back in the day ... but I have no information and would doubt that the current version runs on Alpha at this time as the current effort is primarily targeted for INTEL*64]

BTW the Vax with Ultrix will be similar to the Alpha from a development stand point - ie DEC GEM based compilers but ... The version will be even older than the Alpha one.  So while their might be newer Gnu tools on a *BSD tape - other than C/C++ I would not expect much support from the gnu folks. 

One other thing about Ultrix.  If you are trying to do anything on Ultrix, you want version 4.4 or later.  Anything earlier in the 3x-early 4x versions is likely to have lots of bugs as DEC had started to let Ultrix decay in favor of Tru64.   When this strategy had some issues, DEC eventually hired Locus to fix a ton of issues / back port things that the customer needed -- IIRC those started to hit the street with Ultrix 4.3.  My memory is that 4.4 is when a ton of issues that the VAX had were folded back into that mainline.  

Clem

Sent from my iPad

On Jul 12, 2015, at 6:20 PM, Gary Lee Phillips <tivo.overo at gmail.com> wrote:

>> If you want to run on a VAX or Alpha, I don't think Linux even is an
>> option. You'll have to go with some BSD. NetBSD and OpenBSD both have
>> support, although if we talk VAXen, I think the support is slightly
>> better in NetBSD.
> 
> There is still Linux for Alpha, Johnny, though it's beginning to age
> from lack of supporters. Debian for Alpha exists up through "Sid" I
> think. CentOS also had an Alpha version last time I looked. I have run
> the Debian versions and they pretty much work as they should. I've
> never seen Linux for VAX at all, that's true.
> 
> I'm not personally concerned with security patches, as my machines are
> not usually on the net at all. I live in a rural area where
> connectivity is costly and not to be wasted. I use the machines mostly
> for mathematical and engineering experiments and personal amusement.
> I'm a radio amateur, and the Alphas are real nice for circuit
> simulations and RF modeling, for instance. Fortran does pretty well
> there. I raised my question because though the "unsupported
> distribution tape" for ULTRIX 4.0 includes Gnu EMACS as a source
> archive, it was clearly not actually ported or tested (as in, make
> fails immediately despite README claiming otherwise.)
> 
> Since downloading large files is next to impossible here, I try to
> know what I'm getting into before forking over $60 for a set of
> distribution CDs. One of the BSD flavors might suit, but it's very
> difficult to be sure from the descriptions that are offered. Clearly
> VAX or Alpha aren't exactly high on their priority lists. Current
> pages on both BSD sites link to non-existent pages on HP sites, for
> instance.
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