[TUHS] VAX System V

[Ron Natalie via TUHS]

System V on the VAX was underwhelming.    It lacked demand paging which 
all the BSD variants on the VAX already had four years or so before
System V was released on the VAX.   System V didn’t finally get real 
virtual memory until SysVR2.4.

Armando Stetner from DEC brought a Vax to one of the UNIX conferences 
and had it in his room.  He had to run cords to various other rooms to 
get enough power to run it.
He made a presentation that for over ten years UNIX and DEC had been 
pretty much synonymous, not that DEC had noticed and announced the first 
UNIX license from DEC.
He held up a license plate.   They gave those plates away (still have 
mine).    It was a few years before an official Ultrix release (4.2BSD 
based).    Later marketing weenies issued new
plates that said Ultrix, but they weren’t that interesting.



------ Original Message ------
>From "Kevin Bowling via TUHS" <tuhs at tuhs.org>
To "The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" <tuhs at tuhs.org>
Date 6/10/2026 2:43:31 AM
Subject [TUHS] VAX System V

>I got a manual set for Digital VAX System V 3.2.1.  It appears to be a
>descendent of AT&T's VAX port, but it was thoroughly extended with
>large system hardware support (including CI bus) and even sundries
>like X11R4.  Compared to i.e. 3B2 System V which IMHO is pretty bare
>bones and even a little half baked.  The manuals are actually pretty
>great.
>
>I'm not overly familiar with DEC but perusing history it seemed to be
>that Ultrix was always playing second fiddle to VMS.  VAX System V
>seems like a "more serious" UNIX, it targets the large machines:  VAX
>11/780, 6000, 8000, 9000.  Only in the 3.2.1 release did a MVII pop
>in.
>
>I don't think I've ever seen anything on this in the wild, the main
>customer appeared to be AT&T itself and the RBOCs.  Information online
>is scare.
>
>Regards,
>Kevin