[fl7305]

Yup. My point was that I can understand if someone rejects a 750 in 1987 because it is fairly slow. I think home computers like the Amiga and Atari ST had at least that much raw CPU power?

But VAXen in general in 1987 weren't yet hopelessly slow, right?

I can understand if people didn't like VAXes for personal reasons. I had a pick of both a fast VAX and fast Sun workstations in 1987, the Suns were clear winners for me.

[gumby]

It was delivered back when the 750 was new, but we had lispms and PDP-10s and didn't care about stuff like vaxes.

I think it was already obsolete when RMS started using it, and had probably never been used over the years by anyone. Nowadays that kinds of thing is unremarkable, but back then at most places it would have been shocking.

[rahen]

Yes, it was about the speed of an original Macintosh or a turbo PC/XT, and slower than an 11/70.

https://www.tech-insider.org/unix/research/1986/0219.html

[fl7305]

Thanks, looks like the VAX 11/750 was pretty much the same Dhrystone speed as an 8 MHz 68000 (Atari ST, Amiga).

I/O and disk bandwidth is another matter of course.