MicroVAX help

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Sat Sep 6 16:28:38 1997

<> Despite their possible historical significance, I've never been able
<> to justify keeping a Microvax I around. The 11/730 - which for most
<
<I suppose it'd be a relatively UN-power-sucking way to enjoy or learn
<VAX assembly language.

Microvax-I uses more power than a microvax-II. The lowest power VAXen of
the lot may be the vs2000 or the 3100m38s as they are in the PC power use
range and performance is good(maybe the best!) on a per watt basis.

The microvax-I was historically significant as the first q-bus vax and
smallest of the lot with the shortest production lifetime. Performance
wise it was the bottom of the barrel. Most uVAX-Is were upgraded to
uVAX-IIs (about 3x faster!) shortly after introduction. The uVAX-II
offered 1meg of ram on card, FPU and a faster memory interface(PMI)
along with denser 1mb, 2mb, and 4mb (and later 8/16mb) cards. This made
a 5mb microvax-II possible in two cards instead of 7 using uVAX-I! Typical
uVAX-IIs were 5 or 9mb with DEQNA, DHV11 and varying disk systems including
the RA60, RA80 and RA81. This forced the phaseout of the 730 in favor of a
smaller, lower cost, slightly better performing system with lower power
needs.


Allison
Received on Sat Sep 06 1997 - 16:28:38 BST