I still love the VAX. Even after all these years it still seems like a robust computer, much for the reason bdfh42 cited: it's built to last. Alas, how many computers are built with that intention today? I don't use Windows anymore, but the the SIMH VAX simulator used to work great on XP; it was very fast. Does it still work on Windows 8?

vaxdigitalnh, your post is dead. However, I found the project you mentioned interesting:

The Computer History Simulation Project

http://simh.trailing-edge.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIMH

Quoting from the first URL:

SIMH implements simulators for:

    Data General Nova, Eclipse
    Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1, PDP-4, PDP-7,
        PDP-8, PDP-9, PDP-10, PDP-11, PDP-15, VAX
    GRI Corporation GRI-909, GRI-99
    IBM 1401, 1620, 1130,  7090/7094, System 3
    Interdata (Perkin-Elmer) 16b and 32b systems
    Hewlett-Packard 2114, 2115, 2116, 2100, 21MX, 1000
    Honeywell H316/H516
    MITS Altair 8800, with both 8080 and Z80
    Royal-Mcbee LGP-30, LGP-21
    Scientific Data Systems SDS 940
    SWTP 6800

P.S. I see now that vaxdigitalnh's comment has been resurrected.

Just checked the last VAX I continue to work with (on occasion) - more than 5 years since the last re-boot.

Heh, VAX assembly language is arguably [1] the peak of the CISC instruction set movement.

[1] Some folks that x86 has taken that crown away as it continues to become more specialized but instruction 'feature sets' are, to my way of thinking, somewhat different than the base architecture.