Old and New
I work for a company that still uses VMS for production work. VMS was a product of Digital Corporation. Digital was bought by Compaq several years ago. The U. S. Government required Compaq to continue the support for VMS because the U. S. Government used VMS at the time for a bunch of crap too. Then Compaq went broke and was scooped up by HP. Now, I don't think HP supports VMS. I cannot find any kind of link for VMS support online that isn't some 50 year old guy working out of his parent's basement, with one exception. There are ways to avoid upgrading. You can emulate VMS on a modern OS and hardware. You can replace the applications all together. As far as I can tell, SAP is the replacement for all things Database in the corporate universe. VMS is the Information Technology equivalent of a clay tablet. God forbid they upgrade to papyrus. I remember the late nineties when 3M wheeled a couple of VAX systems (huge boxes) out to the back dumpster and threw them out because no one would take them for free. They couldn't even donate them.
Fifteen years old. The VAX (hardware that runs VMS) systems at my company are fifteen years old. You can only find hardware to replace broken bits on eBay being sold from those guys in the basement.
So, yesterday, I walk in to work and some users have trouble getting into the database. I poke around. I call the support desk. I open a priority one ticket. I stay late. A guy in the DB group and a guy in the Philippines figure it out. I come in the next morning and things are back to normal. All I really did was hit the mute button so they would not hear me moan.
In a side rant: I send the ticket to the help desk. I am part of the support group. I try to tell the person I speak with NOT to send it back to the most obvious queue because that is MY queue and the ticket will just come back to me. Well the first person I speak with is good enough to avoid this trap. However, the next person takes one look at the ticket, sees the name of the database software and forwards the ticket to the most obvious queue. My scalp blows off the top of my head, does two flips in mid-air and slaps back on my scull slightly askew. I call and get it forwarded back to the main queue with a big note that says "don't send it to the most obvious queue." That kills an hour. And it does every goddamn time.  I don't have rights to actually do anything on the VAX/VMS so I have to send in tickets to anonymous geeky basement dwellers across the planet.
Anyway. I'm catching up on a bunch of work and paperwork (two different things to people who actually do work for a living) and what blows by my inbox? An email that says not only did my VMS systems take a crap this weekend, but now several of the other more prominent VMS systems are having some strange problems. We just had a hurricane. Power did all kinds of creative things over the past couple of days. These systems are fifteen years old. (And the size of refrigerators by the way.) They are cranky on good days. They are the equivalent of wooden ships or mule trains. They are like pyramids of geekdom. They are still standing. No one really knows what they were used for. No one knows how to make them work. They are just kind of there.
Then, the email comes down that says "they all just went down." A shutter goes up my spine. What if they don't come back? What if it is time for all good little VMS systems to go to the happy programming grounds? What if it is the VAX rapture?
I wonder what is going to happen when the other shoe drops. It is not like we haven't tried to convince the powers that we need to DO SOMETHING about the problem. Oh, there are projects. There are tons of paperwork dragons floating around. There has been a string of up-aty-ups who all say "It costs too much ..." every three years as they step past this rung on the corporate ladder. These are key systems. They run some important software to make parts of the company function. They contain and process some important data. If they all broke today, there is not much of a way to replace them. There are fewer and fewer people every day who have not yet bricked up the basement door from the inside or who will admit they know VMS. Something is going to give. When I left today, the VAX systems other than the one I support,  were still down.
Any other VAX stories out there?