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was this for an old network?

V

vic user

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 12, 2003
Messages
724
Location
Ottawa, Canada
i recently got dropped in my lap a MicroVax 3100-80, with a SCSI tape drive, and boxes and boxes of binders on Vax and stuff, and lord knows what else that goes with it.

i know nothing about Vax systems, except hearing the name a lot.

so was this an old network thing?

anybody have experience with these things?

i was planning on baterering it off to a local vintage comp. guy for some work on my mac SE30.

chris
 
Wow, for me that was a long time ago. As far as I can remember, The MicroVAX 3100-80 was a computer. Either it was a terminal, or it was a computer. I don't think it had anything to do with network infrastructure. That's all I can remember... Hope it helps you. Someone else can probably come up with more than I did....

-Vlad
 
For a short while, we had a few VAXstation in the computer club, plus a few VAXservers that were more suitable to build a coffee table out of than use for the server capacity (with 1996-97 specs).

HP still has some support docs on VAXen (due to HP bought Compaq who already had bought Digital), but that exact model probably was retired by the end of the 1990's:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/soc_archives/80754.html

VAX typically runs (Open)VMS or Ultrix, an UN*X dialect, although there are NetBSD and a scrapped (?) Linux project. Here are some quick specs on the MicroVAX 3100 model 80 from the NetBSD page:

http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation.../microvaxes.html#microvaxes:microvax_3100_m80

VUPS and TPS are ways to measure computing capacity, like MIPS or so. Our VAXstations were of this kind:

http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation...stations.html#vaxstations:vaxstation_3100_m76

I used to know a guy (well, several guys, but one in particular) who was deeply in love with his MicroVAX and squeezed as much as he could from it.
 
The VAX processor is sometimes referred to as ultra-CISC due to the vast amount of instructions (as opposite to RISC, which is reduced number of instructions). A classic example is that it exists a machine instruction to solve polynomials, at least on the more expensive VAX CPUs - the other would use a software emulation in the case this instruction occurred.

VUP stands for VAX Unit of Performance, and 1 VUP = ~500,000 instructions executed in one second on the 1978 VAX-11/780.

Although there are no official figures, I would estimate that MicroVAX to have an integer capacity equal to a 486DX/2 66 MHz but floating point perhaps like a Pentium-1 66 MHz. That is based on the 3100/80 makes 12 VUP, while a VAX 7160 does 35. At the same time, the 7160 was listed by Digital with SPEC92 values of int 103, fp 176. I once collected a file with some reported 92 values and a few more still online. Maybe there are some errors and bad assumptions though.
 
Or maybe much less, given that SPEC92 was based on that a VAX-11/780 would have a rate of 1 in both tests, so a machine that makes 12 VUP should rate around 12, which would be more like a 486DX-33 or 68040/25 in both integer and float? Not that it matters much.
 
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