VAX and VAXen

A visit to Jim Austin’s Computer Collection at Fimber, East Riding of Yorkshire

The plural of VAX is VAXen. I read it in a VAX/VMS computer manual in the nineteen-eighties.

VAX (Virtual Address Extension) computers were made by DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) and ran the VMS (Virtual Memory System) operating system. Most universities had them: first the VAX-11/780s and later the VAX 8600s. They usually had several connected in clusters – clusters of VAXen.

A DEC 'dumb terminal'

So it was wonderful to see some of these iconic machines again in Jim Austin’s Computer Collection at Fimber near Fridaythorpe in the East Riding. By “again” I really mean for the first time. Hardly anyone got near them in the nineteen-eighties. The privileged might be allowed to look through the glass of their air-conditioned rooms, but ‘users’ were never allowed in. Their only contact with the computers was through remote ‘dumb terminals’. At Fimber you can touch the machines and even open their cabinets and take the boards out. Of course, they are not switched on now.

I returned full of enthusiasm, thinking of the blog posts I could write. My wife was not impressed.

“Great! A barn full of old grey metal cabinets.”

“Well, some are black. And you can open the doors.”

I babbled excitedly about all the machines I had known so well: the Elliott 903, IBMs, ICLs, PDP-8s and PDP-11s, SWTPC minis, LSI-11s, Sun microsystems, Silicon Graphics, VAXen …

"VAXen!" My wife ran out of patience.

“Did they come in boxen? Ordered by Faxen? Would we call our fridge and freezer Electroluxen? VAXen makes them sound like little animals – or the name of one of Santa’s reindeers.”

“Reindeer(s?)”

Now there’s another plural to think about.

Other posts about computers:

Grandad Dunham's  Flight Simulator

The Mighty Micro

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