[HECnet] Oldest VAX/VMS for VAX-11/730 on HECNET

[Lee Gleason]

   I think you are recalling this one

http://www.vaxmacro.de/vbto.html

   that explains when VMS clocks will overflow. We have a little while 
left before that's a problem.

   There will be other problems when the year increments to 5 digits, 
but the above article assures us that there will be a fix before then...


  Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR
Control-G Consultants
lee.gleason at comcast.net

On 12/8/2021 9:15 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> Ah. Found it: https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/decly.htm
> But I thought it also mentioned when the VMS timestamp would run out, 
> but I seem have misremembered. But anyway, it does show that DEC had 
> already thought about beyond 2000 back in the early days of VMS.
>
>   Johnny
>
> On 2021-12-09 03:23, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> Now someone just need to post the link to the answer written by 
>> someone at DEC about the eventual wrapping of the VMS timestamp.
>>
>> Time in VMS is handled pretty nicely. The only real problem is that 
>> they went with local time. Otherwise the VMS timestamp is excellent. 
>> (I think TOPS-20 use the same thing.)
>>
>>    Johnny
>>
>> On 2021-12-09 02:44, Mark J. Blair wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Dec 8, 2021, at 5:32 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> While I'm sure there were various Y2K bugs around, the basic design 
>>>> in VMS was intended from day 0 to handle dates beyond Y2K.
>>>> So I would just try to set the correct date to start with, and if 
>>>> something seriously breaks, then I would consider shifting it back 
>>>> to an earlier year.
>>>
>>> Oh... I set the time and date when prompted during the 
>>> installations, and then when the system time displayed as 1982, I 
>>> assumed it was not Y2K capable. So I tried setting the time after 
>>> booting:
>>>
>>>> $ show time
>>>>     8-DEC-1982 17:39:46
>>>> $ set time=08-DEC-2021:17:40
>>>> $ show time
>>>>     8-DEC-2021 17:40:02
>>>
>>> And then after rebooting:
>>>
>>>>    VAX/VMS Version V3.0 26-APR-1982 16:21
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> %OPCOM,  8-DEC-2021 17:42:34.01, logfile initialized by operator OPA0
>>>>          logfile is SYS$MANAGER:OPERATOR.LOG
>>>>    Login quotas - Interactive limit=64, Current interactive value=0
>>>>    SYSTEM       job terminated at  8-DEC-2021 17:42:35.06
>>>>
>>>> Username: SYSTEM
>>>> Password:
>>>>          Welcome to VAX/VMS version V3.0
>>>> $ show time
>>>>     8-DEC-2021 17:42:53
>>>
>>>
>>> How about that!
>>>
>>
>