The CHARON-VAX family of products are VAX replacement systems, running as a software application on industry standard systems. The VAX CPU, memory, disks, tapes, serial lines, and Ethernet controllers are emulated by mapping their functionality onto Windows system services, creating a virtual VAX on a PC platform. No retranslation of your existing VAX code is required!
CHARON-VAX for Windows is designed to directly replace most VAX systems with Windows XP or Windows Server 2008 PC's. It covers the entire VAX performance range, from MicroVAX all the way to powerful VAX 6600 class (up to 500 VUPs - VAX Unit of Processing).
This virtual VAX executes VAX code directly on the Windows system - the original VAX binary code, including the VMS Operating System, is copied to the new host system and executed as a Windows application. This VAX code is executed as-is by the emulator software. The VMS Operating System boots as it normally would, and VAX applications run as they normally run. CHARON-VAX is a model of a complete VAX system, not restricted by a specific VAX operating system.
The VAX operating system and applications are transferred once - system operation and application maintenance continue unchanged. Application source code is not required for the transfer.
CHARON-VAX uses a standard Windows environment without requiring custom hardware. It is a normal Windows application that can co-exist with other Windows applications on the same host system.
The emulated VAX disks are represented as disk image files, or 'virtual disks', permitting rapid backup, copying and management of complete emulated VAX systems. Configuration files permit easy switching between specific VAX configurations. VAX SCSI disks can be directly connected to the Windows system.
RRD45 CD drives are mapped to the host system CD drive(s). You can directly boot from VAX/VMS distribution CD's or load CD-based application software like on a real VAX.
The CHARON-VAX performance scales with the PC's CPU speed. For integer operations, CHARON-VAX provides a performance of up to 2.7 VAX Unit of Processing (VUP) per 100 MHz of CPU clock. Disk I/O is 5 to 20 times faster than on the original VAX.
Emulated serial lines can be mapped to physical serial ports, a PC-based terminal emulator, telnet sessions, or application programs on the host system.
CHARON-VAX emulates the VAX Ethernet adapter with a standard, off-the-shelf PC NIC. In most cases the standard 10MHz VAX Ethernet link speed can be boosted to the faster 100MHz speed of today's PC networks.
