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DEC VAX 11/750 in D.A.R.Y.L. (1985)

An VAX 11/750 appears at the military research centre where it acts as a store for Daryl's memory.

Importance: ****
Realism: **
Visibility: **

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gordon

Yep. That looks like a 750 alongside an external drive enclosure. On the far right appears to be a VAX 11-730 which was the very bottom of the VAX line-up. It was a fairly horrible little machine being utterly un-expandable. In the front are standard DEC terminal/printers, only one of which was required to serve as the system console (for either the 750 or 730 and probably the 780). Back in the day they were pretty cool machines. VAX-VMS was a relatively marvelous operating system which ran all three systems - providing excellent management for multiple terminals. (VT-100s). This was back when MS-DOS had just come out. What a dog! As an aside, the top of the 11-730 popped open to reveal a removable 10 Mb cartridge. The biggest drive DEC sold back then was a 450 Mb device the size of the white rectangle at the top of the 730 box on the right, about 20" deep. As I recall, it went for about $20k. A new 11-730 sold for around $30k. A new 750 went for ~$50k plus. And, a new 780 went for ~$100+. These were all 32 bit architecture systems, the big "plus" determinant being drive space and how many terminals you wanted to run (10-300). Don't forget, these babies required their own air-conditioned space.
2012-10-17 16:40


Andrew

If i remember correctly, all the computer center scenes for the movie were filmed in EPCOT Center's Computer Central in Communicore, so all the machines were up and running, controlling the entire park while they were filmed. Kinda neat.
2018-05-10 16:29