Essay on VMS VAX Operating system
...mpatible with the PDP-11 computer to protect the capital investment of DEC’s customers (Flynn & McHoes, 2000).” The VMS operating system was to further add advantages to DEC’s present and future customers; however, the newer VMS operating system did present it’s own disadvantages. Advantages DEC’s strategy to upgrade the PDP-11 with the VAX/VMS system presented two immediate advantages for their existing clients. The first was obviously to offer an upgrade for PDP-11 users without incurring the costs to integrate a new hardware and software. These possible costs include the need for new training and administration. As a new and improved system, the VAX/VMS system was designed to support a wider range of applications. This would be possible because the VAX processor boasted, “32-bit virtual addressing, sophisticated memory management and protection mechanism (Flynn & McHoes, 2000).” This sophisticated memory management was a state-of-the-art feature in the VAX/VMS system. VAX uses a large virtual space and VMS uses a FIFO scheme to divide the virtual space into 512-byte pages (Madera, 2000). This memory management provides a multi-user, multiprogramming environment. The VMS system attraction extends to its user friendliness. As a command driven system, all the commands are in English verbs that relates to its function (Flynn & McHoes, 2000). This makes the system very easy to learn and understand. Beyond that, the VMS HELP command offers immediate information assistance at the user’s terminal Disadvantages The VMS operating system was designed to work only on VAX hardware. Thus the VMS is VAX hardware dependent, meaning that V...