1977

"Star" The VAX11-780 was a one MIPS (one million instruction per second) machine that became an industry standard: DEC dubbed its performance one VUP for VAX Unit of Performance; but "standard" benchmarks as the SpecMark89, SpecInt92, SpecFp92 are also based on the 780. The processor unit depicted to the left contained the SBI (synchronous backplane interconnect; said to be borrowed from a never-finished 36-bit machine, the "Unicorn"), CPU (KA780), FPP (FP780), memory, UNIBUS adapters (DW780), power supply and the console, an LSI-11 (PDP-11/03) processor. A usual configuration contained 4MB of ECC RAM. A commercial "hit", and a very reliable machine too: a few of them are actually in use even this day (2000), and they were "cloned" too!

780 opened up
A nice brochure photo
A tipical configuration
Oldies but goldies...
A closer look
Full house
Machine house (but you can't hear the noise)
 
 

PDP-11/60: An It-could-have-been-a-VAX PDP-11