The VAX 6000 was a family of minicomputers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) using processors implementing the VAX instruction set architecture (ISA). Originally, the VAX 6000 was intended to be a mid-range VAX product line complementing the VAX 8000, but with the introduction of the VAX 6000 Model 400 series, the older VAX 8000 was discontinued in favor of the VAX 6000, which offered slightly higher performance for half the cost.

Cabinet

The VAX 6000 was housed in a cabinet which contained three card cages in the upper portion: a 14-slot XMI card cage on the right for CPU and memory modules, and optional VAXBI Bus hardware on the left. The VAXBI hardware distinguished two versions of the VAX 6000 platform, XMI-1 and XMI-2. XMI-1 differed from XMI-2 by requiring a DWMBA adapter and the presence of two 6-slot VAXBI channels, whereas in the XMI-2 platform, VAXBI was an optional feature and, if required, it was provided as a single 12-slot channel. In both versions, VAXBI was provided by two 6-slot VAXBI card cages.