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Anybody Want to Help Name a VAX?

NF6X

NF6X

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Location
Riverside, CA, USA
Hey, maybe this will be fun. Or maybe it'll just be lame. But here goes nothing: I made the winning bid on an VAX-11/730 system on eBay yesterday, and now it'll need a hostname. I have an idea or two, but somebody else might have a better one?

I propose a 6-character limit for DECnet node name compatibility, but a longer one might be OK under BSD if it can be meaningfully abbreviated. I don't recall the exact hostname limitations for VMS, 4.3BSD, etc.

I could call it VAX730 of course, but that's not very creative.

It was mentioned in another thread that the 730 was pretty slow. So maybe POKEY would be fitting.

This'll be my obligatory VAX, saving me from the burden of having a much larger and hungrier 11/780. So that could suggest something like OBVAX.

Here's a blurry eBay picture for inspiration:

NamelessVAX.jpg

My PDP-11/03 system will be named HERMAN, after its previous owner. He also owned my Nova 3, which I'm tentatively naming PACIFIC (after Herman's company where he used it) pending learning about any hostname limitations on a Nova (if they even have a concept of hostname). I haven't come up with a name for my PDP-11/44 project yet.
 
When I was using an 11/725 (same CPU in a different box), many years ago, I kept saying, "Hurry up, DAMMIT!" Obviously, DAMMIT should have been the node name.
 
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AteEm said:
On Dasher, on Dancer, on Prancer, ONVAXN :eek:
Click to expand...

Just LOL'd in my cube to that one.

Do you have other computer names in the collection? Are you impressed with this server or depressed ("BERTHA")?

Perhaps if you're always yelling at it you could call it "Alan".
nIBN5.gif
 
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NF6X said:
Hey, maybe this will be fun. Or maybe it'll just be lame. But here goes nothing: I made the winning bid on an VAX-11/730 system on eBay yesterday, and now it'll need a hostname. I have an idea or two, but somebody else might have a better one?

I propose a 6-character limit for DECnet node name compatibility, but a longer one might be OK under BSD if it can be meaningfully abbreviated. I don't recall the exact hostname limitations for VMS, 4.3BSD, etc.
Click to expand...

Given some of your other interests, I would nominate 'trsvax' (which was at one point a real box).

Next in line would be 'kremvax' but that has more than six characters.

And might still exist!
 
This is fun!

I call my home Mark's Green Truck Ranch (MGTR). Too bad that MGTRVAX would be 7 letters.

I also like dogs, so I could call it DOGVAX.

It's one of the smaller VAX-11 systems, so maybe VAXINA. Hmm, that sounded better in my head than it looks in print.
 
A classy latin name Vaxius.
A classic dogs name Vaxxy (also what I often end up going with)
The not so stable DEC War cry! GOVAXG
 
NF6X said:
I also like dogs, so I could call it DOGVAX.
Click to expand...

I think that is unfair unless your dog knows the SYSTEM password (root if you run BSD).

The name of my former PDP-11/73 was SPOT; I think because I would never name a real dog that, and I liked Eddie Munster calling the dragon under the stairs that when I was a kid.

Nowadays most of the systems I control are named for containers (some obscure), or plumbing parts for network appliances: Barrel, Basket, Bucket, Bushing, CheckValve, Firkin, Kilderkin, Manifold, Rundlet, Siphon, Tee, Thimble, Tierce
 
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At Atari Games, in the 80s, the VAXs were named after famous people with names that sounded somewhat like VAX such as:
Ernie SlowVax
Sandy KoVax
Kim NoVax (or maybe it was Kim NewVax)

doug
 
I've always been a die-hard PDP-11 user,
so I've done my best to stave off the VAX.

Fortunately, I was VAXEN8 'd at an early age. ;-)




T
 
Our twin 11/780's at Uni had the rather unimaginative names of VAXA and VAXB, both running VMS. And some other uni had a modified VAX they called 'Kim NoVax' or something like that. Here in Australia, VAX is also a brand of vacuum cleaner - we have one :)
 
I have a two different themes to suggest:

1. The 11/780 was codenamed "STAR" (some VMS libraries are called starlet because of this). The 11/750 was codenamed "COMET" (it's even printed on the backplane). The 11/730 was codenamed Nebula, so perhaps a find a nebula you like and name it after that.

2. It's seems fairly common to choose names from Tolkien books. The book"VAX/VMS Internals and data structures" quotes Tolkien in the begining of some chapters.


Edit: Actually "Starlet" was the codename for VMS.
 
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