>Gunther Schadow wrote:
	>Damn! And I must have gotten the first edition that doesn't contain
	>any of the specific stuff I need to know about my VAX 6000. I was 

	The Vector instructions were a late addition to the
	VAX architecture so that's why they are only in the later
	edition of the VARM.

	>actually quite disappointed about the VARM as it contained little
	>more than the VAX Architecture Handbook. Basically it comes down to

	The handbooks were mostly put together by marketing and
	were known to contain some errors which persisted
	across multiple editions even though the errors were
	(supposedly) pointed out to those concerned. 

	The VARM was produced by the same people who managed
	the architecture. It cam from the same sources as the internal
	architecture document (DEC STD 032).

	You are free to rely on whichever one you choose :-)

	>an annotated list of machine instructions. Fine, I really would
have
	>iked to learn about all the different generations of the busses
	>Unibus, QBus, XMI and BI, etc. But nothing to be found. Now you say
	>I just should have gotten a later edition?

	The VARM describes the VAX *architecture* rather than any particular
	implementation. It happens to throw in a few words about some of the
	extant implementations at the time the book was published but that's
	about it.

	If you want to know about UNIBUS or QBUS (aka LSI-11 bus) you'll
	have to look elsewhere (e.g the pdp11 bus handbook, often available
	from your favourite ebay auction). The early PDP-11 manuals
	often discuss UNIBUS in considerable detail and the early MicroVAX
	manuals (say up to the time of the KA650 machines) often
	discuss QBUS in an appendix.

	VAXBI and XMI are harder to dig out details for. I've
	seen various manuals  that discuss programming
	details but I don't know whether they were generally
	available. Laserbus falls into this category too.

	You also have to remember that VAXBI and XMI
	also had internal standards documents (as did UNIBUS
	and QBUS "after the fact" IIRC). I presume that LSB did too
	but I never saw a reference to it. All of these docs were
	*each* about the same size and complexity of the VARM.

	Throw in the internal busses that only made it into
	one or two machines (NMI in the Nautilus machines,
	MI (??) in the VAXft series) and your document is now
	one and a half bookshelves long :-)
	 
	>Anyone wants to trade? My copy is cosmetically quite nice, and I 
	>don't care about that at all here.

	You probably need to get hold of the VAX 6000 series
	manuals. I think there is one that specifically discusses
	the vector processor itself. If all you want are the instructions
	then that is in the VAX MACRO manual online at COMPAQ's site.

	Regards,

	Antonio