Tom's Guide | Tom's Hardware | Tom's Games
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
It's an Operating System made by Digital Equipment Corporation, which runs on the APLHA processor. Compaq bought out DEC and is now the seller and developer of OpenVMS and the ALPHA processor.

OpenVMS is an industrial strength secure multi-user multi-tasking computer operating system (i.e. its not a consumer toy!). As the previous reply stated it was originally designed and produced by Digital Equipment Corporation but is now owned by Compaq Computer Inc. since their buy-out of Digital in 1998. See www.openvms.compaq.com for further details of the OpenVMS operating system and FAQ's.
It runs on two processor type's; VAX and Alpha both of which were designed by Digital and are now produced and marketed by Compaq. The VAX chip (32 bit CISC) was superceded by the Alpha chip (64 bit RISC) and is now end of life. Compaq announced this year that Alpha will be replaced by the Intel Itanium Processor Family (64 bit EPOC) over the next few years.
It has both character cell and windows GUI user interfaces. However the windows interface is based on the X.11 windows standard (as used in Linux/Unix) and not the MS Windows system.
You cannot get a version of VMS that runs NATIVE on any Intel Pentium processor (32 bit CISC). You can get an emulator for the VAX version of VMS that runs on Pentium. Its called CHARON VAX. See www.charon-vax.com
You can alo get a hobbyist version of VMS that is free for non-commercial use. See http://www.compaq.com/inform/issues/issue27/ov02-openvms.html
FWIW: Both the VMS and Windows NT operating systems were designed by the same guy, Dave Cutler.
Hope this helps,
Robin

You can get a shell account to a VMS system if you just wanna learn about it. These are pretty much just limited to command lines but hey thats the part you need to learn anyway. I used to have one. I just searched at altavista for +vms +"shell account"

Virtual MEMORY System, actually. And you can run OpenVMS AXP on a PC if you can still find one with an Alpha chip. But in NO WAY is VMS free. Ever. You have to pay for media AND license.

![]() |
TX Pro II Motherboard (Up...
|
more info about vms
|

This post is quite old and has been locked from receiving new replies. Please create a new posting instead.
| Ads by Google |