I haven't had it long, so I'm certainly not an expert yet. But I am in good company, apparently the world is full of home MicroVAX nerds. You need only search for home near microvax on the web (that's what I did). There's a whole FAQ list about it! There are also other people who are proud of their home microvax nerdness. Check out Nerd Net. And wait, it gets worse! Crazy Cam Manson even has a home MicroVAX network!

So I am in good company. One day I'll work out what to do with it. Actually, I do have a reason to use it. I have this great software for Metric Multidimensional Scaling, called Galileo. I have a perfectly good PC version of the software, but I have a sentimental attachment to the VAX version that I began using many years ago, and have modified since then. And when the MicroVAX at my workplace was decommissioned, it somehow managed to follow me home!

When I told a friend about it, he asked "How big is it (cubic metres)?"! He asked the wrong question actually. It's not that big, the system unit is about the size of a 2-drawer filing cabinet, and the external disk drive is as big as a large shoebox. Then there's the VT220 terminal and Decwriter IV printer. Apparently there's a disk inside the unit, but it crashed a few years ago, so they just mounted an external disk. The size problem is not the machine itself, it is the documentation. The thing came with about 40 manuals, each a 3 inch thick ring binder! So the documentation is bigger than the machine. It even comes with an "obsolete features" manual. My friend unkindly suggested that ALL the manuals were for obsolete features!

And here is what you've been waiting for, a picture of the beast. Here's the hardware.

And here's the documentation!