The first VAX in CPC (now ITCS) was an 11/780 which arrived around 1982 and was the first system at UEA with a memory measured in Megabytes ( 3 or 4 ). The VAX hardware from the American "Digital Equipment Corporation" (DEC) ran their VMS operating system. Before that the ICL 1903T mainframes processors had each been clocked up to 1904S and had 256K memory I think. I still have a badge from a DECUS conference at Warwick in 1981 which has the legend "VAX for the Memory !" such was the general amazement at this vast amount of RAM. Even so the mainframes still ran on until 1986 with the VAX being used for "essential" interactive work - replacing the QMC MAXIMOP system on the ICL mainframe.

In 1986 the next major procurement replaced the ICL mainframes with a DEC 8650 supermini and a couple of MicroVax II systems. These were eventually clustered with the 780 providing common user authentication , filestore and shared batch and print queues. Later the cluster was enhanced with the addition of 6 MicroVax 3100 systems making a 10 node cluster.

Student use of VAX/VMS clustered systems

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