From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms


Here a a couple doozies for the collective knowledge here.

Is the current Mimer DB derived from the on that ran on PDP-11's
and the VAX back in the mid 80's?

And here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?

And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)

bill
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 6/28/2026 7:30 PM, bill wrote:

Is the current Mimer DB derived from the on that ran on PDP-11's
and the VAX back in the mid 80's?

Believe so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimer_SQL#History

https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-11/c/xDUlCFx-G0s

And here's a more obscure one.-a Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE?-a I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure.-a According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD.-a It ran on top of VMS.-a VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?

And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)

I remember having heard about it before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software) says:

<quote>
Eunice was criticized for its performance problems and not quite
complete Unix compatibility. Eunice's reputation for poor compatibility inspired the "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." message
included in the Perl configure script.
</quote>

:-)

Why would you want to run Eunice??

1990's VMS 6.x Posix is newer and likely more compatible as it had
to pass Posix certification.

GNV is almost modern.

Arne



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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On Sun, 28 Jun 2026 20:39:46 -0400, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

1990's VMS 6.x Posix is newer and likely more compatible as it had
to pass Posix certification.

Yeah, but so did Windows NT
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOeku3hDzrM>.
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:

And here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?

It did it very, very, very slowly.

EUNICE was a bad idea all around. However, the Software Tools environment
from gatech gave you a reasonably unixlike interface on top of Pr1mos and
later VMS without making any of the underlying stuff unixlike.

And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)

Jerry Scott is still on linkedin.
--scott

"Wollongong, it's gone all wrong."
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 6/28/2026 8:39 PM, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

On 6/28/2026 7:30 PM, bill wrote:

Is the current Mimer DB derived from the on that ran on PDP-11's
and the VAX back in the mid 80's?

Believe so.>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimer_SQL#History

https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-11/c/xDUlCFx-G0s

Interesting. Wonder why only RSX at that point in time as there were
a lot of serious businesses running RSTS.

And here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?

And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)

I remember having heard about it before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software) says:

<quote>
Eunice was criticized for its performance problems and not quite
complete Unix compatibility. Eunice's reputation for poor compatibility inspired the "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." message
included in the Perl configure script.
</quote>

Everyone knew about the poor performance. But EUNICE wasn't the only
poor performer. Whenever someone ran Ada on the system I was using
everyone else just logged off and found some other way to occupy their
time. :-)

Like many other things at that time the software was too far ahead of
the hardware.

:-)

Why would you want to run Eunice??

Why would I want to run a VAX? It's fun. It's interesting. It's
nostalgic.

1990's VMS 6.x Posix is newer and likely more compatible as it had
to pass Posix certification.

Not interested in POSIX. I used that when it first came out on the
VAX and wasn't impressed. It had been done better by STVOS but, sadly,
like most academic endeavors the grad student graduated. The project
withered on the vine and we waited a couple decades for someone to try
and reinvent (badly) the wheel.

GNV is almost modern.

Isn't GNV nothing but a handful of userland utilities common to
Unix? Not hardly the same as a functional Unix OS running on top
of VMS.

bill

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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 6/28/2026 8:39 PM, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

On 6/28/2026 7:30 PM, bill wrote:

Is the current Mimer DB derived from the on that ran on PDP-11's
and the VAX back in the mid 80's?

Believe so.>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimer_SQL#History

https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-11/c/xDUlCFx-G0s

Interesting. Wonder why only RSX at that point in time as there were
a lot of serious businesses running RSTS.

And here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?

And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)

I remember having heard about it before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software) says:

<quote>
Eunice was criticized for its performance problems and not quite
complete Unix compatibility. Eunice's reputation for poor compatibility inspired the "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." message
included in the Perl configure script.
</quote>

Everyone knew about the poor performance. But EUNICE wasn't the only
poor performer. Whenever someone ran Ada on the system I was using
everyone else just logged off and found some other way to occupy their
time. :-)

Like many other things at that time the software was too far ahead of
the hardware.

:-)

Why would you want to run Eunice??

Why would I want to run a VAX? It's fun. It's interesting. It's
nostalgic.

1990's VMS 6.x Posix is newer and likely more compatible as it had
to pass Posix certification.

Not interested in POSIX. I used that when it first came out on the
VAX and wasn't impressed. It had been done better by STVOS but, sadly,
like most academic endeavors the grad student graduated. The project
withered on the vine and we waited a couple decades for someone to try
and reinvent (badly) the wheel.

GNV is almost modern.

Isn't GNV nothing but a handful of userland utilities common to
Unix? Not hardly the same as a functional Unix OS running on top
of VMS.

bill

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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 6/28/2026 8:39 PM, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

On 6/28/2026 7:30 PM, bill wrote:

Is the current Mimer DB derived from the on that ran on PDP-11's
and the VAX back in the mid 80's?

Believe so.>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimer_SQL#History

https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-11/c/xDUlCFx-G0s

Interesting. Wonder why only RSX at that point in time as there were
a lot of serious businesses running RSTS.

And here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?

And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)

I remember having heard about it before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software) says:

<quote>
Eunice was criticized for its performance problems and not quite
complete Unix compatibility. Eunice's reputation for poor compatibility inspired the "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." message
included in the Perl configure script.
</quote>

Everyone knew about the poor performance. But EUNICE wasn't the only
poor performer. Whenever someone ran Ada on the system I was using
everyone else just logged off and found some other way to occupy their
time. :-)

Like many other things at that time the software was too far ahead of
the hardware.

:-)

Why would you want to run Eunice??

Why would I want to run a VAX? It's fun. It's interesting. It's
nostalgic.

1990's VMS 6.x Posix is newer and likely more compatible as it had
to pass Posix certification.

Not interested in POSIX. I used that when it first came out on the
VAX and wasn't impressed. It had been done better by STVOS but, sadly,
like most academic endeavors the grad student graduated. The project
withered on the vine and we waited a couple decades for someone to try
and reinvent (badly) the wheel.

GNV is almost modern.

Isn't GNV nothing but a handful of userland utilities common to
Unix? Not hardly the same as a functional Unix OS running on top
of VMS.

bill

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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 6/29/2026 8:55 AM, bill wrote:

On 6/28/2026 8:39 PM, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

GNV is almost modern.

Isn't GNV nothing but a handful of userland utilities common to
Unix?-a Not hardly the same as a functional Unix OS running on top
of VMS.

I believe that Eunice, Posix shell and GNV are all just a shell and
utilities - not an OS. Nothing in the Wine/WSL2/XDE category.

OK - Eunice and Posix also came with library support, but
VMS C RTL out of the box today are probably more compatible
with modern *nix SW than they were - things evolve and
lot of effort has been put in making VMS C RTL reasonable
compatible (sometimes by defining some magical logicals).

Arne



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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 6/29/2026 6:57 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:

bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:

And here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?

It did it very, very, very slowly.

Not necessarily EUNICE's fault. As I said in my response to Arne,
that was a time when software was too far ahead of hardware.

EUNICE was a bad idea all around.

I don't see why. Just too far ahead of it's time like many ideas
of that era.

However, the Software Tools environment from gatech gave you a reasonably unixlike interface on top of Pr1mos and later VMS without making any of the underlying stuff unixlike.

I am very familiar with STVOS. Worked with it pretty much from the
beginning and liked it. Still play with it today. If it's development
had continued at the time there would probably never have been a need
for POSIX except as a standard for STVOS.

As for the methodology behind EUNICE, remember PRIMIX? That was Pr1me's attempt at the same thing. It's performance was as dismal as EUNICE and
it also gave Pr1me a reason to withdraw permission from the project to
do a native mode Unix on the 50 series which was just about to be
announced and released.

And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)

Jerry Scott is still on linkedin.

I wonder if he even remembers EUNICE. :-)

bill


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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 6/29/2026 9:20 AM, bill wrote:

I am very familiar with STVOS.-a Worked with it pretty much from the beginning and liked it.-a Still play with it today.-a If it's development
had continued at the time there would probably never have been a need
for POSIX except as a standard for STVOS.

As for the methodology behind EUNICE, remember PRIMIX?-a That was Pr1me's attempt at the same thing. It's performance was as dismal as EUNICE and
it also gave Pr1me a reason to withdraw permission from the project to
do a native mode Unix on the 50 series which was just about to be
announced and released.

I accidentally left this part out.

In order to show what it had accomplished and what it likely
could have accomplished, STVOS was not just on VMS and Primos.
It ran to some level on over 50 different systems ranging from
Mainframes to Microcomputers offering an unbelievable (at the time)
source level compatibility.

bill



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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

In article <6a41bed2$0$665$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>,
Arne Vajh|+j <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 6/28/2026 7:30 PM, bill wrote:

[snip]
And here's a more obscure one.-a Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE?-a I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure.-a According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD.-a It ran on top of VMS.-a VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?

And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)

I remember having heard about it before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software) says:

<quote>
Eunice was criticized for its performance problems and not quite
complete Unix compatibility. Eunice's reputation for poor compatibility >inspired the "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." message
included in the Perl configure script.
</quote>

I think it actually predates that.

I suspect Larry Wall introduced it with `rn`, his news reader,
before Perl. The `Configure` script that came with `trn` has
the same text, and that was a fork (essentially) of `rn`.

Indeed, one sees it in old from volume 1 of `comp.unix.sources`,
posted in 1985; Wall didn't publish Perl until 1987:

https://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume1/rn/part02

- Dan C.

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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 6/29/26 10:35 AM, Dan Cross wrote:

In article <6a41bed2$0$665$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>,
Arne Vajh|+j <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 6/28/2026 7:30 PM, bill wrote:

[snip]
And here's a more obscure one.-a Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE?-a I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure.-a According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD.-a It ran on top of VMS.-a VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?

And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)

I remember having heard about it before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software) says:

<quote>
Eunice was criticized for its performance problems and not quite
complete Unix compatibility. Eunice's reputation for poor compatibility
inspired the "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." message
included in the Perl configure script.
</quote>

I think it actually predates that.

I suspect Larry Wall introduced it with `rn`, his news reader,
before Perl. The `Configure` script that came with `trn` has
the same text, and that was a fork (essentially) of `rn`.

Indeed, one sees it in old from volume 1 of `comp.unix.sources`,
posted in 1985; Wall didn't publish Perl until 1987:

https://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume1/rn/part02

Interesting, I didn't know how much he took from previous projects. The
eunice stuff in Configure matches very closely what's in the Perl 1.0
sources:

https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/16421f70f5b26ada5762d8a85272ac582fe2f9a5/Configure#L2419
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 2026-06-29, bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:

On 6/28/2026 8:39 PM, Arne Vajhoj wrote:

GNV is almost modern.

Isn't GNV nothing but a handful of userland utilities common to
Unix? Not hardly the same as a functional Unix OS running on top
of VMS.

They are the same thing (at least according to the Wikipedia link posted
about Eunice). They both provide a compatibility library so that a Unix userland can be run on top of a foreign operating system (ie: VMS).

You are not running "a functional Unix OS" on top of VMS. You are running userland tools by means of an interface layer and, if anything (based on
the comments in this discussion), it sounds like the modern approaches to implementing that interface layer provide better solutions.

It's really no different from the fact that I am running an Alpine Linux userland on my Android phone by means of an interface layer so I can use various Unix programs directly on the phone.

Simon.
--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 6/28/26 19:30, bill wrote:

And here's a more obscure one.-a Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE?-a I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure.-a According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD.-a It ran on top of VMS.-a VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?

And one last non-technical one.-a-a Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around?-a Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it?-a It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons)-a and After all these years I would love to play with
it again.-a I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be-a screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750.-a :-)

Bill, just FYI, we at LSSM recovered EUNICE v3.1 from tape a couple
of years ago, along with manuals. We've not tried to run it on anything
but we believe it to be a complete distribution.

-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, President/Curator
Large Scale Systems Museum
New Kensington, PA
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