<You know, if there is one good the about Pee Cees, it is that whatever can
<run on a 12MHz 386 can run on a PIII Xeon 500MHz box.  It may not be

Often found false or worse.

<optimized (at that speed, who could tell?), but atleast it will work!  As
<great as the vax is, this is something that could have been better.  Low
<level stuff.  There is so much work that must be put into getting it to
<run on the next model, it just isn't even funny.

This isn't even funny enough to be a troll.  For PC equivelence any code 
that runs on a PIII/500 wouls also have to run on the first model (XT!).

The plethora of hardware in the vax world is the result of a single 
archetecture that spans 21 (YES twenty one) years.  Over that time memory,
display, CPU core, Mass Storage all evolved and the VAX did too to embrace 
that.

<No wonder VMS isn't "The Greatest<tm>".  There is a ton of crap in the
<low-level stuff that is specific to certain models, all billion and three
<or so.  The only good part about this is that when DEC made the screwed up
<hardware, it worked, and it usually worked very well.  I guess that is the
<price we pay for advancement?

Wrong reason.  Unix was the greatest as well, same problem.  The real 
problem is VAX was high end and LICENSES for VMS were at one time $3000
wich for a system that supported hundreds of users and networking was
cheap compared to the hardware cost.  Then The hardware price dropped,
got even more capable but the license and apps were still costly.

Comparing PC appliences to vaxen is by far a foolish task.  The average 
PC is not near as reliable as even the common againg vax found for free
and often despite lofty clock numbers really isn't that fast (ever use
a 333 Celeron for a 100mb database?).  Most PCs are documented so poorly 
the only way to figure out how the hardware works is trial and error as 
the vendor never published data and made it clear then never will by 
discontinueing or going out of business.  Everything in the vax is 
documented, though it's hard to find many years after the fact.

Take a breather from this and skip to better things to tackle.

Allison