Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mephisto!mcnc!rti!bcw
From: bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: RISC: What did they leave out besides the instructions?
Summary: VAX without cache
Message-ID: <3589@rti.UUCP>
Date: 17 Feb 90 17:36:15 GMT
References: <60@paradigm.com> <1990Feb15.054555.18223@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, RTP, NC
Lines: 19

In article <1990Feb15.054555.18223@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, paulf@bodega.stanford.edu (Paul Flaherty) writes:
> In article <60@paradigm.com> gjc@paradigm.com writes:
> >In particular a classic VAX has neither instruction cache nor stack
> >cache.
> 
> Odd.  The only classic Vax that didn't have the 8KB cache was the 11/730
> (and probably the 725 as well), according to my 1982 Vax Hardware Handbook.

He's probably thinking of the MicroVAX, of which the MicroVAX II (and I
think also the MicroVAX I, though I don't know for certain offhand) does
NOT have a cache (that's new with the MicroVAX 3000 series).  You're
right that the older 700 series mostly did have cache;  probably that's
the series that should really be thought of as the "classic VAX" (after
all, that was the first series out!), but it's common anymore to think
of the MicroVAX II as equivalent to the 11/780.  This is probably too
simplistic, but given this it's understandable how the MicroVAX II gets
confused with the "classic VAX".

						Bruce C. Wright