Category talk:DEC VAX systems

Duplication of "VAX" categories?

There are two categories about VAX computer

• Category: DEC VAX systems
• Category: VAXen

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)