About the License

The Student Hobbyist License program allows you to try the latest version of OpenVMS on the FreeAXP Alpha emulator on Windows. The disk image that you load on the emulator already has OpenVMS and the license installed, so it is ready to run. All changes that you make to your pet system are saved, so you can play with it until the license expires and then back up your files and restore to the new updated system easily. The hobbyist kit includes some popular compilers, so you can try writing code for OpenVMS as well.

Hobbyist licenses are valid through March 15, 2021; the functionality of a system with an expired license is severely limited. To continue using your hobbyist OpenVMS system, backup your files, download the new image from our SFTP server, run emulation, and restore the files on the new system.

The hobbyist license is reserved for non-commercial use. For commercial licenses, please see our official website.

About FreeAXP

FreeAXP is a free Avanti™ virtual Alpha technology demonstrator created by Migration Specialties. It provides a virtual Alpha Server 400 equipped with 1 CPU (with EV56, EV6, and EV68 instruction set support), 128 MB memory, 7 disk drives, and two virtual serial ports. It is hosted on Windows 64-bit systems and includes an unrestricted usage license. FreeAXP allows unlimited testing of virtual Alpha implementation without commitment to purchase products or services.

How to Use the License

Download the kit
Connect to our public SFTP server:
  • host: vsiftp.vmssoftware.com
  • username: VSIPUBLIC
  • password: VSIpubB0x (case-sensitive; VICTOR-SIERRA-INDIA-papa-uniform-bravo-BRAVO-zero-xray)

> sftp VSIPUBLIC@vsiftp.vmssoftware.com

Navigate to the STUDENT_KIT directory:
sftp> cd STUDENT_KIT
/disk$public01/VSI$PUBLIC/STUDENT_KIT/
sftp> ls
.
instructions.txt
VSIOpenVMSStudentPackage.exe
Download files
Download the instructions and the file called VSIOpenVMSStudentPackage.exe (approximately 185 MB).

sftp> get instructions.txt
sftp> get VSIOpenVMSStudentPackage.exe

Run OpenVMS Student Package

Run VSIOpenVMSStudentPackage.exe. OpenVMS Student Package will be installed on your system.
Emulation will start and the system will boot automatically.

The credentials for the system and more instructions can be found in the Getting Started PDF which will land in your OpenVMS directory after you install the kit (by default it is C:/Program Files/OpenVMS).

Configure network on the emulator

To activate networking on a newly installed instance of the emulator:

  1. Run manually the PCAP driver installation utility. By default, the utility is stored in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\MigrationSpecialties Shared\msipcap directory.
  2. To run the utility, open CMD as Administrator, specify its location, add I (for Install) and the location of the System32 directory (usually C:\Windows\System32). Here is an example using the default paths for the utility and System32:
    "C:\Program Files\Common Files\MigrationSpecialties Shared\msipcap\MsiIPcapSetup.exe" I C:\windows\system32
  3. Wait until the "Service started successfully." message appears in the console.
  4. Open the Virtual Alpha Configuration utility and select your preferred network interface on the pci11 tab. Alternatively, you may just install the latest version of FreeAXP on top of the Student Package. To do this, follow the guide below: