Camicom SSC

Sadly, the classic emulators system I mentioned earlier has been temporarily shut down due to cooling problems. It will likely be a few weeks before it's back on line.

Mandalay Bay - Las Vegas, NV - Thursday June 18th 09:15 AM

Camiel presented a session on behalf of Migration Specialties at the HP Technology Forum & Expo 2009.

Session ID 2021, "Legacy VAX and Alpha Systems: Refresh, Replace or Emulate" [PDF] covered the pros and cons of hardware refreshment, hardware replacement, and hardware emulation. This session stems from a recognition that time catches up with us all, even our dependable VAX and Alpha hardware. These systems often support legacy applications that remain relevant and business critical. So when the hardware starts to go, you are faced with three choices: refresh, replace, or emulate.

Read a review of the HPTF here.

On May 22nd, 2009, Colin Butcher of XDelta and Camiel Vanderhoeven of Camicom SSC set up an AlphaServer 4100 at the National Museum of Computing located at Bletchley Park in the UK. This AlphaServer is used to serve emulators running classic operating systems to visitors from all over the world. We invited the public to come along and share in the experience of properly designing and setting up such a system. This included setting up the CSWS web server and the SIMH emulator.

Check out the system at http://retrobeep.no-ip.org. You can get your own instance of an emulated PDP8/E (running OS8 or DMS), PDP11/44 (running RT11 or RSTS), VAX (running VMS) or Altair Z80 (running CP/M). You can also play the classic games Adventure and Dungeon.

Camicom SSC is partnering with Migration Specialties as a main contractor for the development of VAX and Alphha virtualization solutions.

Here is the original press release from Migration Specialties:

Migration Specialties is pleased to announce development of VAX and Alpha virtualization solutions for OpenVMS and Windows platforms. These solutions will allow legacy VAX and Alpha based applications to be re-hosted onto hardware such as HP's Integrity and Proliant platforms.

Our solution entails a virtualization layer that supports various hardware emulators. We are developing an Alpha emulator first, targeting production release in early 2010. This will be followed by release of a VAX emulator. We have the support of an international group of partners in this endeavour, including HP, Intel, Nemonix Engineering, XDelta Limited, Strobe Data, BRUDEN-OSSG, Camicom SSC, and Control-X Limited.

The virtual VAX and Alpha products will join Migration Specialties suite of legacy application support solutions. Our goal is to help customers identify and install the legacy support option that best meets their specific requirements, be it refreshed hardware, virtualized hardware, or new hardware. Legacy systems exist because they work; Migration Specialties helps you keep them working.