VAX 780 on eBay

Yup. The 8600's (UMBC1 and 2) were connected to Bitnet, and I was a little Bitnaught until I found AI. It might have connected through the Gandalf network or something else, I'd have to check old printouts. Kind of like MIPS, but I think they were going for throughput. The 780 may have had the same CPU speed as the Microvax II, but anytime you hit disk on the MV you were slugging down to the Q-Bus speed, going through a 4mb memory map window, and the RQDX3 wasn't either fast or very good IMO. The 780 would plow through the MASSBUS channel interfaces directly attached to memory (well, on a 780 everything went SBI) and RM03/RM80/RP07 drives were way faster than RD54's. And you could go to CI bus to talk to an HSC50 which could do more interesting stuff with RA81's and 82's.