VAXmate was an IBM PC/AT compatible

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

introduced by

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

in September, 1986. The replacement to the

Rainbow 100 The Rainbow 100 is a microcomputer introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1982. This desktop unit had a monitor similar to the VT220 and a dual-CPU box with both Zilog Z80 and Intel 8088 CPUs. The Rainbow 100 was a triple-use ...

, in its standard form it was the first commercial diskless personal computer.

OS and files

The operating system and files could be served from a VAX/VMS server running the company's VAX/VMS Services for MS-DOS software, which went through several name changes, finally becoming

Pathworks PATHWORKS (copyright requires all letters capitalized) was the trade name used by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts for a series of programs that eased the interoperation of Digital's minicomputers and servers with personal ...

. Alternatively an optional expansion box containing either 20 MB or 40 MB hard disk could be purchased which allowed it to operate as a more conventional stand-alone PC.

Original specifications

The basic system contained an 8 MHz Intel 80286 CPU with 1 Mbyte of RAM, a 1.2 MB RX33 5¼-inch

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

drive, a 14-inch (diagonal) amber or green monochrome

CRT CRT or Crt most commonly refers to: * Cathode-ray tube, a display * Critical race theory, an academic framework of analysis CRT may also refer to: Law * Charitable remainder trust, United States * Civil Resolution Tribunal, Canada * Columbia ...

and a thinwire Ethernet interface all contained in the system unit. It was also provided with a parallel printer port and a serial communications port. A separate mouse and LK250 keyboard were used with the device. As well as the expansion box, an

80287 x87 is a floating-point-related subset of the x86 architecture instruction set. It originated as an extension of the 8086 instruction set in the form of optional floating-point coprocessors that work in tandem with corresponding x86 CPUs. These m ...

numeric coprocessor could be ordered as an option, and the memory could be expanded by 2 MB with another option to 3 MB. In North America, an internal modem was also available.

DECstation

It was superseded by the

DECstation The DECstation was a brand of computers used by Digital Equipment Corporation, DEC, and refers to three distinct lines of computer systems—the first released in 1978 as a word processing system, and the latter (more widely known) two both ...

200 and 300 in January 1989.

References

Notes

External links

VAXmate at research.microsoft.com
{{DEC hardware IBM PC compatibles DEC computers Computer-related introductions in 1986 16-bit computers