I stepped out of college in 1983 and was part of a startup factory IT team (Pulp Mill in MS) that used the VAX 11/780 as the core of its business systems. I became a DECUS VAX Sig "Master" over the years and worked on all models of VAX and MicroVAX models up thru VAX 8000 and MicroVAX 4000 until moving to Alpha models. At one time while living in NC, my license plate was "VAXMAGIC". Sadly, the name "VAX" took a nasty turn during Covid19 period and I no longer associate myself with it.
The same machine my college had until the early 1990s, replaced by a 4500. Too bad there's no mention of details (VT105s, VMS/DCL). It was a joy to use compared to the DOS machines in other classes.
Interesting that he did not mention what is likely the greatest innovation of the VAX system - its Virtual Addressing System, called VMS. This was the first commercially viable system that allowed people to write programs requiring far more memory than the physical memory installed in the machine. Big programs could be stored on the much larger disk drives, and then only the currently needed parts were loaded into the central processor's Random Access Memory, as needed. Then again, this presentation, nicely done, was focused on hardware, not software.
The IBM model s/360-67 had virtual memory, called DAT (dynamic address translation) in 1967. The VAX/VMS system was introduced in 1977. Virtual memory was not innovative by then, for example a number of PDP-11s had it by that point.
Thanks for sharing, Darrell. Brings back many fond memories. As a note, our math class at Vic High had a card reader and acoustic coupler modem connection to the old PDP-11 and we used to write simple Fortran code on the punch cards. We all needed to be careful not to drop our stack of cards or get them out of order. Working with the VT100's was such an improvement. Kudos to Camosun for having one of the first VAX-11/780's. VMS was so ahead of its time.
@@JonMotivationalRend Funny you should say that about VMS and Unix. I used a VAX 11/780 at university from 81-84, and then again at work in a telecoms company once I'd graduated. In both cases the VAX was actually tunning BSD Unix, and later at work, DEC's Ultrix. It was only a few years later that I briefly came across VMS on MicroVAX machines. Of course by then, I was thoroughly indoctrinated in Unix ways, and remain so until this day.
Is it just me or are some of those numbers nonsense? 25krpm? 256MiB RAM I think he meant 256KiB. I don’t think a hard drive spins at 25k RPM that just sounds ridiculous
You are correct in pointing out it is 256KiB per board for memory, it had 10 boards, so approx 2.56MB. The disk looks to be an RM02, which spins at 2,400 RPM, not 25,000. Overall the presenter did a very good job communicating without reference to notes. OK, a few errors with off the cuff calculations and specifications. Perhaps due to the demands of trying to concurrently do so many things: -speak clearly over the noise of the machines; not get tangled up with the microphone wire that can be seen coming out the back of his jacket and across the floor as he moves (3:14); present to the camera while positioning his hand at each component as he described it; etc. I found he described a complex system in a way that would be easy to understand by someone new to computers at the college. A good effort for a short news article produced by students and a manager at their college.
You can emulate one using SimH, and on even modest modern hardware it'll run faster than the real thing. Media for various versions of VMS are available online, up to 7.3 (the last version for VAX architecture).
