3 Nov
2011
3 Nov
'11
7:13 p.m.
On 11/03/2011 10:01 PM, leaknoil wrote:
I would think they would would re-release them at that
price point. I
bet that box could be recreated today for very little. HP could use the
money.
It's only like 20mhz faster then the 4000 which sells for $75 on ebay.
*Which* 4000? There are VAX 4000 models made with at least three
different CPU implementations, which have wildly varying levels of
performance, even clock-for-clock. MHz isn't an effective measure of
computer performance.
Besides, remember how procedure-oriented the US Gov't is. It's the
world's best refuge for people who are incapable of independent thought,
because there are rule books and procedure books for EVERYTHING. If
said book says "thou shall run this on a VAX4000-96", even if a good old
3100-M38 would do the job just fine at about $20.00, you'll sign the P.O.
Even if you had a VAX app you couldn't port for
some odd reason the
premium seems ridiculous. If you are waiting on an ancient VAX to do
real work for you you obviously don't care about the speed of execution.
It will be like 9.5 hours instead of 10 to finish your job.
I wouldn't make those sorts of assumptions. First of all, not all
VAXen are slow. Next, speed of execution isn't always the #1 concern in
computing, though as good American consumers, we've been trained to
believe that it is, so we'll keep buying new hardware whether we need it
or not.
Think of the military. Would you rather stuff in that arena be
running on something well-broken-in, dependable, maintainable, and ultra
reliable, or the newest whiz-bang thing that may or may not have, say,
ECC on the memory bus?
I hate thinking anything in the defense department is
running on a
vaxstation 4000 still but, it's the government after all.
They're fine machines. The Pentagon is filled to the brim with VAX
7000s, which are also fine machines. Rock solid, very fast, very
predictable, and they run the stuff they need to run. What's not to like?
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
New Kensington, PA