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From: cowan@udel-relay.arpa
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: MicroVAX
Message-ID: <17034@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 29-Feb-84 21:36:42 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.17034
Posted: Wed Feb 29 21:36:42 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Mar-84 03:32:35 EST
Lines: 16

From:      Ken Cowan 

	I have seen the MicroVAX announcements from DEC.  Customer
shipments of prepackaged systems are supposed to begin in March.
I haven't heard anything about the availability of the chip set.

	The comparison to the VAX 11/780 couldn't have been for
the whole system.  The MicroVAX is Q-bus based, which slows the system.
It also runs off of a winchester that is much slower than the disks
shipped with 11/780 systems.  There are also some memory management
things done in software, most notably the page table translation;
which is done in hardware (microcode?) in the 11/780.

	However, the MicroVAX sounds like a super machine if you are
running an LSI-11/23 size application that needs to grow to 32-bit
virtual address type architecture.