They improved the QBUS equivalent over the UNIBUS ones (but that is only my opinion of course). Bigger cards = more expensive cards though!
I remember trying to squeeze my hands between UNIBUS slots to remove those little cards...
Dave
What was worse tho is that the DEC UNIBUS backplanes normally came from the factory with wire wrap jumpers on the pin side across the BGx and NPGx lines.
So if you wanted to put a card in a slot that was non-memory, you needed to go to the backside, find the jumper wires on the slot you wanted, and unwrap them.
Over time I think most backplanes have now lost all their jumper wires, and nobody goes to the trouble of putting them back if you remove a card.
You just track down a grant card for the slot.
In fact, in my PDP-11/34 DD11-PK and DD1-DK 9 slot backplanes I just removed all the jumpers when I got them and bought a pile go G7273 dual grant cards.
On a few cards (DL11-W comes to mind) I had to add a small jumper wire across the NPGx in/out pins since the card itself was missing those (an oversight IMHO.
And the little cards only did the interrupt BGx propagation, not the NPGx, which was in another block. The larger G7273 handles both (as well as being easier to insert/remove).
(Ok, back to the original thread now ... enough of a diversion).