On Sunday, December 15, 2002, at 10:40 AM, Emmanuel Dreyfus wrote:
> You don't really need more information if you have a debugger on VMS:
> you can run the binary and break and dump registers and stack before 
> and
> after the system calls. That way you'll discover everything about 
> system
> call handling.
>
> When you do this, it helps a lot to have the prototypes for the system
> calls, but theses are ususally in system header files. If they are not,
> you are left with the last option, which is dissassembling bits of a 
> VMS
> kernel (sounds disgusting!)
>
> I would have more concerns with the executable format. What is it? It
> would be hard to implement a foreign executable format without
> documentation on it.

   The source code for older releases of VMS are floating around...I've 
seen at least one copy on eBay within the past year or so.  That'd 
really be the easiest way to do this, I think, barring access to any 
very descriptive documentation.

   Access to a VMS system really isn't a problem...they're all over the 
place.  Even lacking that, VAXen can be had very cheaply, and the VMS 
hobbyist program will provide legal copies of VMS.

           -Dave

--
Dave McGuire           "I'll send you adapters to go both ways."
St. Petersburg, FL                          -Bill Bradford