they supported a special connection between two vaxen which would let them share dec raXX 80mb disks under special circumstances. i think we were able to share the mag tape, too.
Was this related to the first 2-way 78x that (I think) was built at Goergia Tech? (It's been a long time since I read the paper about this.) (I'm thinking about the same loons who start their BBQ with liquid oxygen. Both projects have entertainment value.)
those suckers had paper consoles, 4 and 8mb of memory and the largest ethernet card i've ver seen -- whole 9 yards.
Oh yah? My 785 had a paper console (LA34), 24 MB of memory(!), and also took up close to 27 feet of floor space :-) (We had Ethernet, too, but I never measured the size of the card.)
the kernel had to be rebuilt to change boot devices!
We had to halt the microcode floppy IPL to poke a register on the TU (?)x controller to put our (not DEC approved or supported) SI9000 tri- density tape drive into the correct density in order to read the install/upgrade tapes ;-)
God I miss real hardware! --lyndon
