Computer Museum: Vax

Status: public -- Last revision: April 13, 2001

Vaxes and Berkeley Software

The first Unix systems (on PDP hardware) were limited in memory size (64 Kbyte or 128 Kbyte).

In 1978 Digital Equipment Corporation did introduce a new computer architecture (VAX). Shortly thereafter Bell Laboratories did port Unix to this architecture (Unix 32V). Unix 32V offered a larger address space, but virtual memory was not yet available. The effective memory size of a program was still limited by the physical memory in the machine.

The University of California at Berkeley did use Unix since 1977 and they regularly did offer Berkeley Software Distributions(BSD) to organizations which had a Unix License from ATT. In 1981 Berkeley did offer a Unix version on Vax hardware with virtual memory and network software (TCP/IP). These 4.* BSD systems did become very popular within universities.

In 1984 the Department did start with two Vax 11/750 systems, first under 4.2 BSD and later under 4.3 BSD.

In 1985 and 1986 we did buy 3 µVax systems. At that time Digital already had its own unix version (Ultrix). Our micro-VAXes first used Ultrix, but later we switched to the Unix version of Mt Xinu, a Berkeley spin-off, which had implemented NFS under 4.3 BSD.

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