Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!cmcl2!acf3!hershman From: hershman@acf3.NYU.EDU (Ittai Hershman) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: DEC hardware manuals Summary: VENUS and 36 bits Message-ID: <717@acf3.NYU.EDU> Date: 20 Jun 88 20:26:02 GMT References: <9312@eddie.MIT.EDU> <467@aiva.ed.ac.uk> <9341@eddie.MIT.EDU> <167@pigs.UUCP> Organization: New York University Lines: 13 I don't know about how Titan fits in, but my understanding is that both the Venus and Jupiter projects were failing and some manager was smart enough to figure out that one project could succeed if the two were merged. Given that DEC (Gordon Bell, in particular) had wanted to kill off the 36 bit line for years for political reasons, that choice was easy to make. Alan Kotok and company made the first VAX which looked like a PDP-10 sans 4 bits -- the VAX-8600 "Venus". -Ittai PS: The above is all based on gossip and hearsay mixed with a bit of common-sense. If anyone was there, I'd be interested hearing what really happened.