4 ms·
VAX's were minicomputers, not mainframes.
by tgflynn 7y ago
VAX's were minicomputers, not mainframes.
- m463 7y agoYou're correct, although they did frequently have some of the hallmarks of "mainframes" like raised floors/cooling. It's amusing to look up "mainframe" on wikipedia and see what appears to be compact server racks. Shouldn't a mainframe take up a room, or even a whole floor?
- Zenst 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX_9000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX_9000 "The VAX 9000, code named Aridus or Aquarius, was a family of supercomputer and mainframe computers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) using processors implementing the VAX instruction set architecture (ISA)."
- tgflynn 7y agoI never heard of that model. I suspect it probably wasn't very successful because DEC started to move to the Alpha architecture not many years later. I worked with a lot of VAXen back in the day but I never heard anyone refer to them as "mainframes".
- Zenst 7y agoAye, not common and for many will be a surprise as mention VAX and the DecVAX workstations and as you say, midrange setups spring to mind. I did some C work upon them late 80's and was very impressed and some profiling tool that was a whole new experience of joy. Will add, you could win a lot of proposition bets that Dec made a VAX supercomputer.
- pinewurst 7y agoVAX 9000 was quickly superseded by the NVAX processor. It was Ken Olsen’s final failure at DEC to expend tremendous resources on an ECL mainframe only to have a single chip equivalent by the time it finally shipped.