[Info-vax] VAX 6000 on Young Sheldon

[abrsvc]

On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 3:30:23 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 2/3/2023 3:22 PM, Neil Rieck wrote: 
> > On Friday, February 3, 2023 at 11:24:21 AM UTC-5, Roy Omond wrote: 
> >> On 03/02/2023 14:01, Arne Vajhøj wrote: 
> >>> On 2/3/2023 8:48 AM, Neil Rieck wrote: 
> >>>> Don't know how many people here watch "Young Sheldon" which is a 
> >>>> spinoff of "The Big Bang Theory". Anyway, last night we see Sheldon 
> >>>> Cooper take delivery of a main frame in his dorm. What got rolled in 
> >>>> was a VAX-6000-420 with three racks of disk storage. I guess Chuck 
> >>>> Lorre and staff didn't know this was a mini (or perhaps they did but 
> >>>> just liked the sound of Sheldon say "I need a mainframe") 
> >>> 
> >>> Ah memories. 
> >>> 
> >>> End of 80's I worked on a 6000-420. We could have 110 interactive 
> >>> users on that system. 
> >> Memories indeed. The 6000-4n0 was the lower-end system to support 
> >> vector processors (the other one was, of course, the VAX 9000). 
> >> 
> >> Managed both of these in the early 1990s in Heidelberg at the 
> >> European Molecular Biology Laboratory. 
> >> 
> >> P.s. I have no idea who "Sheldon Cooper" is. 
> > 
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Cooper 
> > 
> > VAX-6000 was the Chevy of minicomputers in the 1990s. 
> > 
> > IIRC, Vector processing was only available if you purchased the optional vector processing board (I saw one once at DEC in Bedford Mass.) 
> > https://manx-docs.org/collections/mds-199909/cd1/vax/60vaapg1.pdf
> Yes - it was HW addon. 
> 
> I don't think it sold that well. Those RISC thingies was 
> starting to pop up everywhere. 
> 
> But the 6000 series sold pretty well and I think a lot of them 
> kept running well up in the 00's. They were pretty 
> good systems - especially the 400 and later. 
> 
> Unlike the 9000's which is think mostly had a short 
> career in the data center. 
> 
> Arne
I know of 2 VAX6200 clusters still running today. These are expected to be running for another 2 years before getting replaced with a PLC based system.
Dan