[ILUG] [OT] They don't make 'em like they used to...

[Kenn Humborg]

 From my recently-acquired VAX Architecture Reference Manual:

   The VAX-11/780 computer, announced in 1978, was the first processor
   of the VAX family.  It is packaged in a cabinet 60 inches tall and
   47 inches wide.

   ...

   The VAX-11/782 computer system, announced in 1982, is a dual processor
   VAX-11/780 with shared memory.  The cabinets containing the processor,
   I/O adapters, and shared memory are 60 inches tall and 190 inches wide.

_190_ inches???  Wow!  That's almost 16 feet, about 5 meters.  And 
that doesn't include any storage devices such as tape and disk
drives!

The 780 was 47 inches wide, so 2 780s would be 94 inches wide.
So was the shared memory interconnect 96 inches wide?  What _was_
it?  A bit bucket brigade?

Still, these machines would splat a PC any day of the week (if
it fell on one, that is...)

Later,
Kenn