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.