DEC VAX 11/780

During January 2002 Merle Pierce drove to Wisconsin to retreive several machines including this VAX 11/780. The VAX 11/780 is the benchmark machine that defined what a MIP (Million Instructions per Second) was. This machine consists of a KA780 CPU, DW780 Unibus Adapter, MS780 Memory with 16 MB RAM, RH780 Massbus Adapter, and an Emulex SC780 SMD disk controller that emulates an RH780. The VAX has a TU81 6250/1600 BPI 9 track 1/2" tape drive and a cabinet containing four Emulex badged Fujitsu Eagle SMD disk drives. The system runs BSD 4.3 UNIX instead of the more usual VMS operating system. The cabinet at the right holds the Unibus expansion rack and a bank of modems.

The image below shows the 11/780 card cage. The 29 slots on the left are the KA780 CPU. The next 6 slots toward the right are the DW780 Unibus Adapter, the next 20 slots are the MS780 memory (16MB), the next 6 slots are the RH780 Massbus adapter for the TU81 tape drive, and the 4 slots on the far right are the Emulex SC780 SMD disk adapter for the Fujitsu Eagle SMD disk drives.