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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

Do they still sell parts? Do they still produce parts? Do they still sell new systems?

Nobody's sold new VAX systems since the 90s. VMS was ported first to the DEC Alpha architecture, then to Itanium, so even for VMS, VAX is two architectures ago.

And Itanium itself is at the end of the road now, but I think still supported for the moment.

A couple of years ago HPE sold VMS to VMS Software Inc, who have ported it to x86-64. So it’s three architectures ago.

The VAX version apparently wasn’t included in the deal (to the chagrin of hobbyists, as they can’t get a legally licensed version of VAX VMS anymore), which perhaps shows how relevant it is to modern VMS customers.

As I understand it it is part of the deal - but VMS Software need to make a full release for an architecture before they can license it - and Vax is clearly not worth the effort.

Sucks for me as I have an old VaxStation lined up for some spare time messing about :(

Incidentally HP themselves can and (I think) do sell and transfer licenses, but that's expensive and even then reputed to be hard to arrange as VMS is so obscure within the org. Definitely no hobbyist licenses though.

No. Actual VAX died shortly after Alpha became a thing, and Alpha died when Itanium came along. OpenVMS was ported to Itanium around 2010/2011, but HP shifted to x86-64 around 2015 as Itanium sales began to quickly drop. At this point, there’s x86-64, ARM, RISC-V in the west, with Itanium’s cousin Elbrus in Russia and some MIPS stuff in China. IBM still makes and sells POWER, but it’s a niche of a niche market.

If someone managed to make Alpha or VAX come back, he/she might end up sued into oblivion by HPE… and then possibly hired by them.

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