At 07:15 PM 3/4/02, joseph p bennardo wrote:
>I have some questions concerning the Vax 4000/700 series computer. How
>much would one of these cost me?

Somewhere between $0 and $2,500. If you contact any number of DEC 
re-sellers (they advertise in Processor Magazine (www.processor.com)) they 
can often sell you one. Note that there are VAX 4000/400's, ,/500, /600's, 
/600a, /700, /700a, /705, and /705a which are all basically the same 
processor with a faster clock rate. So the /700 is somewhat midrange there. 
Not as valuable as a 705 but better than a 500. The biggest problem is that 
since most of these are just a processor swap the resellers keep the 
processors but dump the chassis.

>  Are there any significant benefits in
>speed or general performance over the 4000/90 series vax I already have.

The "significant" benefit is that the 4000/700 has a Qbus attached to it. 
You can install some neat peripherals there (like parallel interfaces, 
serial port muxes) that let you do interesting things with your machine. 
Further, the 4000/700 can be camouflaged as an end table, whereas the 
4000/90 looks like a bulky PC type computer.

>The 4000/90 is worlds better than the Vax 3100 I started this project
>with and I'm wondering if I'd see a similar jump in performance Weith a
>4000/700 vs 4000/90

No, you would see a big jump if you went to the 4000/96 or a 4000/705a, but 
with the 700 you would just get a bigger power bill :-)

--Chuck