6 ms·
That is crazy, the amount of space a network adapter took up.
by aswanson 4y ago
That is crazy, the amount of space a network adapter took up.
- db48x 4y agoAnd there were a few more boards for the disk controller, and another couple for the display controller…
- greenyoda 4y agoNot to mention all the boards that the CPUs and RAM took up. Here's a nice photo of the insides of a VAX 11/780 - if you enlarge it all the way you can see the annotations showing which boards do what: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/SPEC-1_VAX_05.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/SPEC-1_V... Note that those 16 huge memory boards each held 256K (kilobytes!) for a total of 4M of RAM. Photo with people to show size of cabinets: https://photovault.com/363660 https://photovault.com/363660
- db48x 4y agoIt’s always surprising to look back at these things, because it hardly seems like it would be economical to build and deliver such a huge monstrosity.
- aswanson 4y agoWhen the alternative is nothing or paying a lot of money for something you need to make a lot of money, people will pay a lot of money. It still crazy though. The 80s don't seem that long ago.
- rasz 4y agoFirst PC network card was only slightly smaller :) 3Com 10Mbps Ethernet 3C500 aka IBM Ethernet (IE) aka EtherLink from October 1982 https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a03cac_005e3e9eb62b47c29265cb94a99f68aa~mv2_d_3264_2448_s_4_2.jpg/v1/fill/w_3264,h_2448,fp_0.50_0.50,q_90/a03cac_005e3e9eb62b47c29265cb94a99f68aa~mv2_d_3264_2448_s_4_2.jpg https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a03cac_005e3e9eb62b47c292...