11 Apr
2026
11 Apr
'26
2:03 a.m.
On 2026-04-10 19:16, Robert Armstrong wrote:
Yup. It and the 86x0 (originally to be the 11/79x) were the
only two VAX processors by the LSG/LCG (home of the TWO Jupiter
projects, the Dolphin - I think that was the one supposed to
run both VAX and PDP-10 code, selected at boot time, etc.)
The 8600 was late and slow. By the time they figured out the
issues that caused the slowness, the 8600 -> 8650 upgrade was a
2-board swap and a new console pack. But we never got the 8670 -
if the 8600 had met its speed target, the 8670 would have been
the "mid-life kicker", like the 785 was to the 780.
The 86x0 shipped with a Russell-Stoll 60A 3-phase connector,
but that was part of "The VAX Mainframe" shtick and it would run
happily on 30A 3-phase, same as a 78x (I actually ran one of my
8650s at SPC that way). The plug was so you could roll out your
IBM 370 and roll in your 86x0 and plug it into the same power
connector. Of course, peripherals and instruction set differ-
ences were just a handwave by Marketing, to be sorted out by the
customer).
Dave McGuire
<mcguire(a)neurotica.com> wrote:
It takes two people to move *the power cable* for that machine.
It was ECL (lots and lots of ECL) after all... The VAX-9000 is arguably the machine that finally
killed DEC. They
spent
over $1 billion on its development, killed several other architectures
in
the process (like Dave Cutler's PRISM - that's why he left for
Microsoft),
and only ever shipped a couple dozen machines.
And about 2 dozen of them came back. I gave Dave a sealed FCO
kit for one of the reliability fixes for the 9000 - a new MCM -
and the FCO said it was to "Fix problems from Alpha particles",
which was funny because the Alpha processor (no relation to the
particles) rapidly took over most VAX applications. Dave said he
wasn't sure if he should worship it or crack open the factory
seal on the FCO ESD carrier, but he eventually decided to open it
(and then worship it 8-).
And by the time the VAX-9000
actually did ship (around 1990-91, I think) the NVAX chip ran nearly as
fast
and was waaayyy cheaper and smaller.
And eventually surpassed it - the 4000-705A was slightly faster
than a uniprocessor 9000. The LSSM has one I painstakingly built
from parts to be 100% authentic - and it runs!
DEC intentionally crippled the 4000 - no CI cluster support,
no Fast Ethernet support. MTI did two spins of a CI adapter, and
the adapter, its S-box panel and the software licenses are find-
able, but the driver is lost. And they stopped supporting it at
VMS V7.2 - it won't run on V7.3. But V7.3 on VAX was really only
half-finished. They should have released -1 and -2 updates for it
like they did for Alpha. Anyway, the MTI CI board was limited by
the slow Q-bus.
Nemonix had a card that offered either fast/wide SCSI, Fast
Ethernet, or both. They were smart and used the KFDDB bus (where
additional SHACs for two more DSSI buses would have plugged in)
for speed. I've never seen one, only the marketing materials.
I guess DEC felt that since they were third-party products (al-
though DEC and Nemonix were VERY cozy) it didn't matter to the
9000.