VAX 11/785 as a workstation :-)

From: Mark Green <mark_at_cs.ualberta.ca>
Date: Thu Aug 2 23:15:42 2001

> > Last night I was browsing the UNIBUS/PDP-11 field guide on the
> > Web before I went to sleep. Then I dreamed of a VAX 11/785 with
> > an UNIBUS extension cabinet full of cards. Included was a 3, 4,
> > 5, or so card-set that together comprises a video interface. Hook
> > up a composite monitor or RGB monitor and there you have it:
> >
> > A VAX 11/785 as a workstation!
> >
> > Write a driver for X11R6 for it and off we go. Has anybody ever
> > seen those UNIBUS video monitor adapter sets? I suppose they
> > were meant for PDP-11s, but I think running them with a VAX
> > would be way cooler. Might not be possible, and certainly would
> > involve some serious fiddling. But in a machine that has 10 or
> > more cards for just the CPU, a 4 board video adapter would be
> > the appropriate thing, wouldn't it? :-)
>
> Read up on the VS100. It hooks up the the VAX 11/78x via a fiberoptic
> cable. IIRC, this was the original development platform for X11. Warning,
> there seems to be very little info available on the VS100.
>

Well sort of, it wasn't version 11 of X at that time. I'm not sure
which version of X was the first released outside of MIT. We were running X
on VS100's in the 1984/85 time frame. There is an article on X in
ACM Transaction on Graphics around 1986 which would have a lot of
the details on the early versions of X.
Received on Thu Aug 02 2001 - 23:15:42 BST