heck, are 11/785s extinct?

--- Eric Dittman <dittman(a)dittman.net> wrote: Back in the day when they used to still compare Mainframe sales to Minis (c. 1984), I remember seeing a number - $300,000,000. It was the amount sold of a particular class of IBM mainframe and nearly the identical amount sold of VAX-11/780s. The dollar figures were remarkably close, especially when it was further evident that it was approximately 100 of the Mainframes and 1,000 of the VAX-11/780s. Those numbers were probably the peak in annual sales of specifically the 11/780, but it is a ballpark - I'd estimate the total sales between 2K and 5K, not including 11/785s. They probably didn't sell as many of those, since most customers did not require dual processors and SMP didn't emerge until 1988 with VMS 5.0, long after the 11/780 was being sold as new. I did see osu-eddie, an 11/780 running some flavor of BSD, once the machine through which all Columbus UUCP traffic flowed, at the university surplus. This was more than 10 years ago, and I think it went for $200. A local reseller bought it, stripped it and I saw the carcass in the dumpster the next month. :-( That was the last 11/780 I saw in the wild. -ethan ===== Visit "The Seventh Continent" http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/