28 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
28 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
VAX
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/vaks/ , n. 1. [from Virtual Address eXtension] The most successful
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minicomputer design in industry history, possibly excepting its immediate
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ancestor, the PDP-11. Between its release in 1978 and its eclipse by killer
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micros after about 1986, the VAX was probably the hacker's favorite machine
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of them all, esp. after the 1982 release of 4.2 BSD Unix (see BSD ).
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Especially noted for its large, assembler-programmer-friendly instruction
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set an asset that became a liability after the RISC revolution. It is worth
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noting that the standard plural of VAX was vaxen and that VAX system
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operators were sometimes referred to as vaxherds 2. A major brand of vacuum
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cleaner in Britain. Cited here because its sales pitch, Nothing sucks like a
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VAX! became a sort of battle-cry of RISC partisans. It is even sometimes
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claimed that DEC actually entered a cross-licensing deal with the vacuum-Vax
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people that allowed them to market VAX computers in the U.K. in return for
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not challenging the vacuum cleaner trademark in the U.S. A rival brand
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actually pioneered the slogan: its original form was Nothing sucks like
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Electrolux. It has apparently become a classic example (used in advertising
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textbooks) of the perils of not knowing the local idiom. But in 1996, the
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press manager of Electrolux AB, while confirming that the company used this
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slogan in the late 1960s, also tells us that their marketing people were
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fully aware of the possible double entendre and intended it to gain
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attention. And gain attention it did the VAX-vacuum-cleaner people thought
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the slogan a sufficiently good idea to copy it. Several British hackers
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report that VAX's promotions used it in 1986--1987, and we have one report
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from a New Zealander that the infamous slogan surfaced there in TV ads for
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the product in 1992.
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