Oh, yeah... One more thing... The -11 in VAX-11 was placed there to indicate the inheritance to the PDP-11, and the fact that it could execute PDP-11 code as well (even if only in user mode). The -11 moniker was dropped when PDP-11 compatibility was dropped. (And for the person who raises his hand and asks about the VAX 86x0 machine, which do have PDP-11 compatibility, those machines were internally referred to as VAX-11/79x, but marketing (or whoever) decided that it would be cool to call them 8600 instead. I even once read a rumor that 8600 was chosed as it was twice that of 4300, but I don't know. But if you read DEC documentation on the 86x0 machine, you can still find plenty of references to VAX-11/790.) If you still doubt what I write, I suggest this source: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/VAX_archHbkVol1_1977.pdf which is the very first edition of the VAX-11/780 Architecture Handbook. Read chapter 1.1, Introduction. Second paragraph has this nice piece of text: "The goals of the VAX architecture were to provide a significant enhancement to the virtual addressing capability of the PDP-11 series consistent with small code size, easy exploitation by higher-level languages, and a high degree of compatibility with the PDP-11 series." Now, if people could only read documentation, and learn to use terms the correct way... ;-) :-D Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol