Trying to design low level hard disk manipulation program
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From: David Wade on 7 Oct 2006 16:09 "Eric P." <eric_pattison(a)sympaticoREMOVE.ca> wrote in message news:452806c6$0$1346$834e42db(a)reader.greatnowhere.com... > prep(a)prep.synonet.com wrote: > > > > VMS has all of the above. > > > > Welcome to 1978. > > Yeah, its just that some aspects of WNT make me > pine for the fjords of VMS. > At the risk of getting black balled from this group, I would like to say that I have never looked back to VMS with any thing other than a wonderment on how clunky and user unfriendly it was. That ruddy "C" compiler (sorry I don't know which) that couldn't read and write "normal" VMS files but only special stream (?) files.All those file version numbers that ate up disk space. That editor that was fine on a local terminal, but which brought any network (that existed at that time) to its knees through trying to echo every chacter remotley.. The Vax 11/750 that seemed woe fully underpowered and which suffered from dreadfull "type behind" when you got a few users on it... The Fortran compiler with all its special VAX extensions, and lastly, and probably, worst of all, those blasted file device strings littered with special characters..... what on earth is "sys$system[my.fortran.files]fred.f77;66" about.... > Eric > Dave.
From: Peter Flass on 7 Oct 2006 18:22 David Wade wrote: > "Eric P." <eric_pattison(a)sympaticoREMOVE.ca> wrote in message > news:452806c6$0$1346$834e42db(a)reader.greatnowhere.com... > >>prep(a)prep.synonet.com wrote: >> >>>VMS has all of the above. >>> >>>Welcome to 1978. >> >>Yeah, its just that some aspects of WNT make me >>pine for the fjords of VMS. >> > > > At the risk of getting black balled from this group, I would like to say > that I have never looked back to VMS with any thing other than a wonderment > on how clunky and user unfriendly it was. There are lotsa people here that agre with you, but I'm not one. > > That ruddy "C" compiler (sorry I don't know which) that couldn't read and > write "normal" VMS files but only special stream (?) files. Was that DECUS C? We had VAX C and had no such problems with it. All those file > version numbers that ate up disk space. and saved your butt when you accidentally deleted or screwed something up. I'm constantly getting requests from programmers to restore old versions of files. That editor that was fine on a local > terminal, but which brought any network (that existed at that time) to its > knees through trying to echo every chacter remotley.. We were mostly local, but I can't recall having this problem. The Vax 11/750 that > seemed woe fully underpowered and which suffered from dreadfull "type > behind" when you got a few users on it... We probably didn't load our 750 too much, but I though performance was just fine. The Fortran compiler with all its > special VAX extensions, Never used it. and lastly, and probably, worst of all, those > blasted file device strings littered with special characters..... what on > earth is "sys$system[my.fortran.files]fred.f77;66" about.... You have a point on this one. On the other hand, what is /my.fortran.files/fred.f77 or \... (etc)? They were a bit '$' happy. > > >>Eric >> > > > Dave. > >
From: Charlton Wilbur on 7 Oct 2006 22:20 yankeeinexile(a)gmail.com writes: [VMS file version numbers] > If there was ONE user-visible feature from VMS that I wish would come > back, that would be it -- and with cheap compute power these days, the > data could be stored on the disk as diffs, thus consuming less disk > space. Mac OS X v.next, due later this year at an unspecified time, will allegedly have this feature. It's about time, says I. (My first real-computer experience was VMS, but I never used it for much more than email.) Charlton
From: Greg Lindahl on 8 Oct 2006 01:58 In article <87wt7b37r1.fsf(a)gmail.com>, <yankeeinexile(a)gmail.com> wrote: >You won't get blackballed ... for a lot of people (oh, Hi, Barbara!) >VMS is a swear word of the worst order. Yeah, but all y'all will get blackballed in comp.arch if you continue to cross-post there. -- greg
From: jmfbahciv on 8 Oct 2006 07:56
In article <87wt7b37r1.fsf(a)gmail.com>, yankeeinexile(a)gmail.com wrote: >Peter Flass <Peter_Flass(a)Yahoo.com> writes: >> David Wade wrote: >> >> > "Eric P." <eric_pattison(a)sympaticoREMOVE.ca> wrote in message >> > news:452806c6$0$1346$834e42db(a)reader.greatnowhere.com... >> > >> >>prep(a)prep.synonet.com wrote: >> >> >> >>>VMS has all of the above. >> >>> >> >>>Welcome to 1978. >> >> >> >>Yeah, its just that some aspects of WNT make me >> >>pine for the fjords of VMS. >> >> >> > At the risk of getting black balled from this group, I would like to >> > say >> > that I have never looked back to VMS with any thing other than a wonderment >> > on how clunky and user unfriendly it was. > >You won't get blackballed ... for a lot of people (oh, Hi, Barbara!) >VMS is a swear word of the worst order. No it wasn't a swear. It was fine OS for minis. I have been told by customers that they loved the philosophy of VMS w.r.t. aiding and abetting users. Of course this user did not have to endure VAX architecture but started using VMS on the Alpha. I think it took until the Alpha to be able to do VMS user requests efficiently (so the OS didn't get in the way of the user's work). > "'Cuz you wanna know if I'm >brain damaged enough to trade my PDP-10 for partial credit on a >machine that can't even do filename completion..." > >I, on the other hand, *LOVED* VAX/VMS. My first "big" computer >experience was writing lots of stuff for VMS 4.5 - before that I'd >done all embedded systems programming. Right. The person I described above had VMS as his first timesharing system. I think this is similar to one's first girlfriend. ;-) <snip> /BAH |