On Wed, May 30, 2001 at 03:40:01PM -0700, Carlini, Antonio wrote:
> 
> 	I've never seen anything that suggested that there was
> 	ever a machine called the VAX-11/784 (or 783 or 787 etc.)
> 	There are plenty of web pages out there that claim that Mach 
> 	was developed on a 784 (amongst other things). But most of
> 	these pages are obviously copies of the "master" page and I
> 	don't see anything at all authoritative on those pages.

Ah, here are the internal product names (note the rather, um,
optimistic VUP rating of the 4-processor 780 configuration, especially
when compared to the 782!)

This is from the table at 
http://www.cam.anglia.ac.uk/~systimk/History/Vaxes.Txt.  The internal
product names I recall from long ago do look right, though I worked at
DEC in '93 so I can't vouch for the early ones!

VAX CPUs
-----+---+-----+-------+--------+--------------------------------+--------------
 SID | X | Id  | Speed |  Bus   | Model Name                     | Nickname
-----+---+-----+-------+--------+--------------------------------+--------------
---- 700 series (1977)
+--------+--------------------------------+--------------
  01 | - | 780 | 1.0   | U,M,C  | VAX-11/780                     | Star
  01 | - | 780 | 1.8   | U,M,C  | VAX-11/782                     | Atlas
  01 | - | 780 | 3.5   | U,M,C  | VAX-11/784                     | VAXimus
  01 | - | 780 | 1.5   | U,M,C  | VAX-11/785                     | Superstar
  02 | - | 750 | 0.6   | U,M,C  | VAX-11/750                     | Comet
  03 | - | 730 | 0.3   | U      | VAX-11/730, 725                | Nebula, LCN
  04 | - | 790 | 4.0   | U,M,C  | VAX 8600,                      | Venus
  04 | - | 790 | 7.0   | U,M,C  | VAX 8650                       | Morningstar

Also, following the table is this piece of history (an excerpt from a
Usenet article written by Eugene Miya):

> Five 784s were built.  I believe I have seen four of the five.
> The code name VAXimus is wrong.  The term VAXimus came from the
> joint Lawrence Livermore, ColoState, DEC dataflow project.
> The 784 delivered to LLNL was given the network host name Circus VAXimus.
> The single processor software development machine (still named
> lll-crg.llnl.gov) is the Gluteus VAXimus (Unix).  We had one here starting
> as a 782 and upgrading to a 784.  I saw CMU's 784 on a visit.  I saw one
> at a classified site who will remain unnamed.  And there was one in Europe
> at a DEC site.  The person to ask about the 784 is John Sopka who is now
> with Transarc.  Gordon would also know (and he is with SUN).

Also, there's a bit more about Purdue's box in which they replaced the
SBI in a 780 with a second processor -- they evidently ended up with a
spare processor because they dropped another 780 off a truck!

Thor