[Coco] OT: Who wants an Alpha?

[John E. Malmberg]

On 6/12/2012 1:01 PM, tonym wrote:
> I got off the DEC wagon years ago. I had a couple of AS1000e's, and
> up until April, had a fully built-out AXPpci-based machine (166,
> 32MB, OpenVMS VAX 7.2 w/DECwindows).

Where you running SimH /VAX to run VAX/VMS on an Alpha or was that a typo?

I tried to get Mocha to run on Java on OpenVMS/Alpha when Mocha first 
came out.  As I recall, the joysticks did not work quite right, but it 
may have been something else.  The VMS Java support people could not 
investigate with out source, and at the time the source for Mocha could 
not be given to them.

I want to get xmess ported to VMS to run an emulated COCO, but never 
really got started on it before I had to move.

If you want to play with VMS, and/or other old machines, there are many 
emulators available.

The SimH collection includes VAX, many PDP, and several other 
emulations, so that you can have a virtual computer room.

SimH emulation targets can be built on most any modern computer that you 
have, and on many small things with computers in them.  All you need is 
a C compiler with 64 bit integer support, and optionally a way to put a 
TUN-TAP style connection on the network adapter.

That makes me curious if it is viable to use SimH as a platform for a 
COCO emulator.

There are several commercial ALPHA emulators that can run VMS and other 
platforms that have free to use licenses for performance limited 
versions of their products.  All you have to do is download them, 
configure them and then install an operating system.  Most of them 
require Windows, but at some may

There is at least one GPL Alpha emulator out that apparently can boot 
VMS, but it also may be incomplete.  The author got hired by one of the 
commercial emulator vendors.

The SimH/PDP-11 comes with a license for hobby use of RSX-11, and the 
the operating system for the PDP-10 is also available.

VMS licenses for hobby use are also free.  License keys with 1 year 
expiration are available just for filling out a form at openvms.org, and 
the software can then be downloaded from a FTP link with a temporary 
account.  You can get licenses for VAX/VMS, Alpha/VMS and Itanium/VMS.

My real VAXes are still powered off.  I am going to power them up 
hopefully soon, but sell most of them off to a reseller.  Apparently 
there is still a demand for some of parts that I have for spares.
I am switching to emulated VAXes.  Less space and power requirements.

I have one DS10 running, and a FreeAXP emulator running, along with an 
RX2600 and a SimH/VAX running.

-John
wb8tyw(at)qsl.network
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