For those uninitiated in old mainframe computers, VAX systems were manufactured by the Digital Equipment Corporation starting in the mid 70's. As the article describes, the UW CSE department has one on display as a piece of historical interest. We used to laugh at its refrigerator sized frame and almost non-existent computational abilities. The Seattle Public School District is still using these machines to place students in their respective schools, and after a scant twenty years of service they are planning an upgrade, for a paltry $2 Million. Why does it cost 2 million to replace an anachronistic machine that has less processing power then many modern cell phones? Bureaucracy, of course.
Artist Representation of VAX Mainframe during the Late Triassic
3 comments:
I heard arachno-bot's cpu is made of 12 of these things hooked up in parallel...
I asked, but it said its internal construction is classified information.
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