Category talk:DEC VAX Systems
Duplication of "VAX" categories?
There are two categories about VAX computer
They overlap a great deal, and I find it very irritating and disturbing.
Could they possibly be merged into one category? Vaxorcist (talk) 14:02, 22 May 2023 (CEST)
- I am not in favor of this; the ideas of the two do not overlap (below). (If individual pages overlap, the first is a sub-category of the second, so no pages should be in both; if you find one in both, delete one tag.)
- The concept, which I think is a good one, is that specific machines (e.g. VAX-11/780) go in Category: DEC VAX systems; Category: VAXen is the most general VAX category, and includes both i) sub-categories which wouldn't fit in the machine-specific category (e.g. Category: VAX Operating Systems, Category: VAX Peripherals), as well as ii) VAX-specific pages which don't fit in the machine-specific category (e.g. VAXcluster, VUP).
- Category: DEC VAX systems might not be the best name, but changing it would be a nightmare; we'd have to edit every page in it; so I think we'll probably have to live with it. (The name pre-dates me; also, 'DEC VAX systems' is good because there are some non-DEC clones, e.g. CM 1700.) Same thing for Category: VAXen; if I were doing it, and starting from scratch, it would be Category: VAX, but it too pre-dates me.
- Having said that, the VAX categories are not perfect, and can possibly/probably use some cleanup. In addition to individual pages which might be in the wrong category, looking at Category: VAXen, I can see several other potential new sub-categories (in a structure which parallels that elsewhere in the DEC category hierarchy): Category: VAX Buses (most are currently in Category: DEC Buses, along with Category: VAXen; and 'series' pages (VAX 10000 series, VAX 4000 series, etc) - we could set up a Category: VAX Series for them.
- One either idea; if Category: DEC VAX systems has too many pages in it, we could split it up into Category: VAX workstations, etc.
- In short, I don't think we have too many VAX categories, but too few. But I am interested to hear what you think. Jnc (talk) 15:58, 22 May 2023 (CEST)
Aha, now I understand (at least I think so ...). So in my opinion the following are wrong in "DEC VAX systems" and should go into "VAXen" instead:
- VAX 85x0, 8700, 88xx, and 897x systems (I put it there)
- MicroVAX
The name of the category VAX 9000 Model 400 series does not really fit in "DEC VAX systems"; maybe it should be renamed to "VAX 9000 Models 4x0" or something similar.
I would not split "VAXen", because the computer names are clearly "speaking", although on the other hand a lot of VAXen are still missing, e.g. the MicroVAX 3100 models or the VAXservers 6000, for example. For a lot of (Micro)VAX/VAXserver variants the only difference between the two in a pair is a flag in the system ROM saying "I am a Multiuser VAX" or "I am a VAXserver".
It's good to have someone to talk to about these things - I feel I would be able to not find a reasonable solution on my own. Vaxorcist (talk) 18:31, 22 May 2023 (CEST)
- Right, I know there are a lot still missing; I was working through Special:UncategorizedPages to catch them all. (They dropped out after I modified Template:InfoboxVAX-Data to not add pages that used it to Category: DEC VAX systems - I object to Infobox templates automagically adding articles that use them to categories - because I like to see categorization shown explicitly in article source.)
- I will leave, for now, the idea of having a Category: VAX Series; but I will probably come back to it as some point.
- I will look at those errors you pointed out; I agree they are probably wrong. Jnc (talk) 18:54, 22 May 2023 (CEST)
- As you perhaps saw, doing them now. Will finish tomorrow morning. Jnc (talk) 02:46, 24 May 2023 (CEST)
Split up category?
I've been thinking that maybe we should split up Category: DEC VAX systems; many of the big machines can stay there (which will mean that we won't have to edit the pages :-), but I think we should maybe have Category: VAXstations as a sub-category. Any others?
I can't work out if we should have a Category: MicroVAXen for the MicroVAX 3100 series, etc, or if there should be a Category: Personal VAXen into which the VAXstations, most MicroVAXen, etc should go. (The issue is that VAXservers are technically MicroVAXen, but aren't personal machines; so should not go into such a category.) I guess maybe the Right Thing is to have a number of small bottom-level VAX categories, above which we do not have to have a strict tree; e.g. Category: MicroVAXen could hold Category: VAXservers (since many of the latter are the former), but if we have a Category: Personal MicroVAXen, that category could go into both Category: MicroVAXen and Category: DEC Personal Computers. (And obviously, once we have article pages assigned to smaller categories, it is easy to re-arrange the category structure above them, without having to edit individual pages.) Jnc (talk) 21:18, 11 August 2023 (CEST)
- It's most likely a good idea to split Category:DEC VAX systems because of its size. But I would never create/use Category: Personal MicroVAXes; "Personal MicroVAX" wasn't common at all at DEC, but "VAXstation" was ubiquitous. There were Personal DECstation RISC systems, but that's a different matter. Putting together VAXstations and MicroVAXen into ONE sub-category would be wrong in my opinion, so maybe "VAXstations", "MicroVAXen", and "(bigger) VAXen" is the way to go for sub-categories below "DEC VAX systems".
- I don't think we have to restrict ourselves to using category names which were used at DEC, because the whole point of the category system is to make it easy for current readers to find things. With that goal foremost in mind, the use of names that clearly (to a modern reader, who may be a novice in this historical area) describe what is included makes sense. E.g. Category: QBUS Storage Controllers; not a term that DEC used (the 'Microcomputer Products Handbook' lumps them all under "Peripheral Interfaces"), but a name that makes clear to modern readers what is it in. (Although perhaps 'QBUS Mass Storage Controllers' would have been better.)
- So what's a clear, concise name that you would use to describe all the 'personal computer' VAXs (since I think that is a natural category to have, no matter what we name it)? I don't think we should use 'VAXstations', because that is a name DEC formally used on a particular group of products. Jnc (talk) 16:08, 13 August 2023 (CEST)
- Onto the matter of (Micro)VAXen and VAXservers: Although not very well known and probably not sold very often, there were also "Server" versions of the "big" VAX systems, such as the VAXserver 6000 and also the VAXserver 9000 models. This made me think of an extra sub-category "VAXserver", which then includes the "small" ones as well as the "medium" and "big" ones. We/I should of course add cross-references from the (Micro)VAX models to the VAXserver models (and vice versa) if they do not already exist.
- No problem with a Category: VAXservers, but I think we should have a different name for the 'VAX servers' category (of which Category: VAXservers should be a sub-category), because, again, 'VAXserver' is a name DEC formally used, and I don't think we should put in that category anything DEC didn't apply that name to. So what do we call the 'VAX servers' category? Jnc (talk) 16:08, 13 August 2023 (CEST)
- I'm a little confused: What "VAX servers" are there that were not made by DEC? DEC called all their VAX servers "VAXservers" - even the MicroVAX II had a variant called the "VAXserver 100". So I would vote for a "(DEC) VAXserver" category without any other "VAX server" category above it. By the way - should "DEC" be included in the category names? Vaxorcist (talk) 17:35, 13 August 2023 (CEST)
- Last but not least another rather unknown (and rare) kind of VAXen - the family of Real-Time (RT) VAXen, that should get its own sub-category, again ranging from the smallest to the big ones. Vaxorcist (talk) 18:17, 12 August 2023 (CEST)
- Another one I forgot: the family of "VAXft" Failure Tolerant VAX systems, very special, very rare and - as far as I know - developed in France! Vaxorcist (talk) 17:35, 13 August 2023 (CEST)
We have a similar problem here, as we do over with Category:DEC Disk Drives; we can divide things up into i) functional groups ('personal computers', etc), ii) DEC product groups (e.g. 'VAXstations'), or iii) both. I have no particular preference. (Except that there are a lot of VAX personal computers which aren't 'VAXstations'. Are they all 'MicroVAXes'? To out it another way, were there any VAX personal computers which were neither MicroVAXes nor VAXstations?)
To me, a 'VAX server' would be a VAX whose only role would be to provide services over the network (files, booting, batch jobs), and which people didn't usually log into. If DEC did call all their VAX servers "VAXservers", this problem goes away. I guess nobody bought 'regular' VAXes to use them as servers? To put it another way, all the VAXes sold as 'servers' were branded 'VAXservers'?
I tend to leave 'DEC' out of category names unless it is necessary; to distinguish a category from a super-cat which contains non-DEC things; e.g. Category: DEC Mainframes and Category: Mainframes. But just Category: QBUS, 'not 'DEC QBUS', etc, etc.
I'm not sure how much difference there is between a 'computer' and a 'system'; those terms are both too loosely defined to be definite. To me, 'systems' can be quite large (to me, the Internet is 'a system'; and in theory, the Earth's entire biosphere is 'a system'). But to me a 'computer' is a more indivisible thing; a 'computer' is either up or down. Multi-processors make it complicated; one CPU in some multi-processors can be powered off but the 'computer' keeps running. (In fact, one of the big 3-CPU Multics machines, at MIT; they would take one CPU down, disconnect it, bring it up as a single CPU system [for debugging] - while people 'stayed logged into, and using, the original system! And later they could reverse the process; add that CPU back into the system, again, without the logged-in users there noticing.) 'It is a complicated question', as they say! Jnc (talk) 21:57, 13 August 2023 (CEST)
