ajp166 wrote:
From: Neil Cherry <ncherry(a)home.net>
Most VAX are mini's (at least in my Opinion).
I'm not sure exactly what
decides that a machine is a Main frame, a mini and a micro (yes I know
most desktops are micro's).
A MicrovaxII in a BA32 is a mini. I VAX6440 is a super mini. VAX9000
certainly qualifies as MAINFRAME.
The '80s blurred mini/mainframe and VAX and AS400 type machines
were doing their best to foster that. The VAX (11/780!) was originally
called a superminicomputer. Then again a 8250 with a disk farm was
anything but mini.
I agree, that's why I tipped toed through that mine field and said "Most
VAX are mini's". I think the medium sized VAX's were the big sellers,
weren't they? I would guess that the VAX 3100's and 4000's would be called
workstations even though they were more powerful that their predacessors.
It's the Unix boxen that confuse me the most, I supported the 3B2 line
of AT&T computers and they had the 3B1 (desktop/workstation/micro computer)
the 3B2 (micro/mini's), the 3B5/3B15 (mini), 3B20 Simplex/Duplex (main
frame?), and the 3b2/4000 (main frame? [4 3B2/1000's in parallel]).
Now to even throw a smaller wrench into the works, I worked with OS9 and
a Gimix Ghost. It had 2 meg of RAM, an 80 M MFM drive, 12 serial ports,
2 printer ports and a video interface (which we didn't use). This box
used a 6809 as it core processor, although every 4 serial ports had
a 6809 to handle buffering and skid (flow) control. I loved that box
and wish I had it now.
--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)home.net
http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only)
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