OpenVMS 7.3 VAX on SIMH via Docker – With VNC to DEC Windows

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(This is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

I wanted to recompile the new smg$routines version of aclock for vax/vms and started messing with SIMH VAX emulator. Thought it would be cool to be able to run it as a Docker container. Here it is:

https://hub.docker.com/r/tenox7/openvms73

https://github.com/tenox7/docksimhvaxvms

To run, simply:

docker run -it --rm tenox7/openvms73:latest

If you want to telnet to it add -p 23:23.

If you want to persist state of the OpenVMS image add -v .....:/data.

Login as system / system

Have fun with virtualization!

UPDATE: Now it also includes a built-in VNC server that does XDMCP Query to the DEC Windows X-Server. Just VNC in to the container! VNC Password is "vncvms"

UPDATE: Because it’s fun with virtualization…

Insignia SoftPC running on OpenVMS on SIMH VAX in Docker
Mosaic 4 on OpenVMS 7.3 VAX

Other software installed:

  • Mosaic & Mosaic 4
  • Netscape 3
  • Word Perfect 5
  • DEC Flight Simulator
  • SoftPC
  • DEC Write
  • NEdit 5
  • ALL-IN-1 (login as office / office and type manager for profile)
ALL-IN-1

Q: How to run ALL-IN-1 ?
A: login as office/office (set host 0 in decterm).

One thought on “OpenVMS 7.3 VAX on SIMH via Docker – With VNC to DEC Windows”

  1. Nice!
    Related tangent:
    Do you use a keyboard layout that uses an AltGr key?
    If so, does that work in your case?
    I had to do a lot of fiddling around with the X server to get the AltGr key to work when I’m using a “modern” X server (approx newer than mid 00’s) with these older operating systems. It seems like older X clients don’t understand as many qualifier/modifier keys as modern X clients/servers, and someone who out to be smeared in tar and rolled in feathers decided to put AltGr over to the “newer/extended” set of qualifier/modifier keys about two decades ago.

    Someone filed a bug report to RedHat at the time this happened, but no-one cared to fix the bug. (There is also a bug report filed semi recently for the VcXsrv project, but the problem obviously lies in Xorg, possibly inherited from when it was called XFree86. Bug report:
    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=110933

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