💾 Archived View for dioskouroi.xyz › thread › 29415213 captured on 2021-12-04 at 18:04:22. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Phone Utility on VAX/VMS

Author: aleks224

Score: 15

Comments: 7

Date: 2021-12-02 12:21:18

Web Link

________________________________________________________________________________

cbm-vic-20 wrote at 2021-12-04 21:49:18:

It's nearly 2022 and the *nix world still doesn't have the seamless clustering support that VMS had in the 80s. K8s gets close, but it's not there quite yet.

yjftsjthsd-h wrote at 2021-12-04 22:36:53:

Oh, no, it's worse than that: We _did_ have it, but nobody cared enough to maintain it -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMosix

krylon wrote at 2021-12-04 22:19:38:

I never used it myself, but I was told DEC had transplanted at least part of the clustering tech to Tru64.

Of course, that got cancelled after HP bought Compaq/DEC and did not want to support two Unix systems. IIRC, they promised to port the cluster stuff to HP-UX, but it looks like that never happened.

phuff wrote at 2021-12-04 21:55:13:

`phone` and `talk` were two of my favorite things to do on the internet way back in the day. Almost better than IRC was starting up a chat with somebody on the local University VAX or Unix boxes that you had never met before.

This and the .plan/finger posts from a few days ago are playing to the nostalgia of a better time on the internet. :). Iirc you could also do fully animated .plan files on VAXes at the time.

aleks224 wrote at 2021-12-02 12:28:33:

http://www0.mi.infn.it/~calcolo/OpenVMS/ssb71/6489/6489p009....

Each person engaged in the conversation has a viewport on the screen. Phone can display as many as six viewports at a time. The viewport contains information regarding the user's name, the text of the conversation, and various status indicators, such as who is on hold. User names of people that you have on hold can be temporarily eliminated from the screen to make room for new participants.

ANSWER      Answers the phone when you receive a call.
   DIAL        Places a call to another user.
   DIRECTORY   Displays a list of the users you can call.
   EXIT        Exits from the Phone utility.
   FACSIMILE   Includes the contents of a file in your conversation.
   HANGUP      Cancels the current phone call.
   HELP        Displays information on how to use the Phone utility.
   HOLD        Places the other users in a call on hold.
   MAIL        Sends a message to another user.
   PHONE       Places a call to another user.
   REJECT      Rejects a call from another user.
   UNHOLD      Reverses the previous HOLD command.

gamache wrote at 2021-12-04 21:34:03:

This was substantially similar to Unix Talk, which may be more familiar to people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_(software)

jandeboevrie wrote at 2021-12-04 21:20:47:

Had an actual chat once via OpenVMS Phone:

https://raymii.org/s/blog/My_first_OpenVMS.html#toc_4

- really fun!