> > from my prior experiences with an 8650 (the last true VAX).
>
> Wasn't the 8600 series developed at LCG? I have heard that sometime.

from the remnants of LCG, yes.  LCG had been killed off before then; the
8650 was the first non-36bit product produced by the group formerly known
as the LCG.  however, what made the 8600 special was that it was the last
VAX to be intentionally made bug-for-bug compatible with the 780/785; the
uVAXII and all the nautiluses that came later were implemented from the
VAX spec rather than reverse engineered from the 780/785 microcode listings
(as the 750 and 730 also were, though the 730 does a number of things wrong.)

since i worked at DEC WRL when the 8650 came into my life, i had access to
something called DIAL -- the digital inactive assets list.  DIAL is a way
to get old hardware, most of it digital but some of it from outside vendors,
which had already been fully or mostly depreciated.  the rule at digital is
that you don't throw things away, you list them on DIAL and hold onto them
for 90 days to see if anybody else in the company wants it badly enough to
take the transfer cost hit on their budget.  if nobody bites, you send it to
a warehouse in arizona where it will be stored a while longer and finally
given away to a school or crushed or whatever its fate will be.

by the time i finished mining DIAL for 8650 parts, my 8650 was 26 feet wide.
i had every ABUS slot full, i had maximum memory, i had five SA482's (each
containing 4 RA82 drives), i had every possible thing i could think to add,
especially things which would add more cabinets.  the field service guys were
VERY amused by all of this, one guy told me he had never seen anything quite
like it even though he had done 8650 maintainance for NASA which had some big
boxes.  the 8650 was and is the pinnacle of VAXness.  i miss it.