The VAX 11/780 attracted the interest of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, which included it in its inventory.
At the dawn of the 1980s, following the example of American universities, at the insistence of Robert Cori (then director of Greco Programmation) with the help of his colleague Michel Mouyssinat, the first connected computer was acquired by a university in France.
What the Conservatoire says about it: This VAX 11/780 model was purchased in 1982 by GRECO, a coordinated research group.
Led by Robert Cori since 1980, it was made up of around 30 computer science research teams, bringing together 250 researchers nationwide. Its influence was even felt internationally.
In 1982, the University of Bordeaux 1 wanted to acquire the most powerful computer in southwestern France. However, the challenge was to buy French, favoring Bull brand products in particular. Competition developed with a research center in Toulouse.
Finally, Robert Cori succeeded in introducing a machine from across the Atlantic, the VAX, to computer scientists in Bordeaux.
That same year, the GRECO team in Talence developed the Geocub server on the VAX, the first exchange network between universities, the CNRS, and INRIA. The advantage was that computers of this type became network nodes.
The LaBRI (Bordeaux Computer Science Research Laboratory) still has the central processing unit from the VAX 11/780, which was part of a larger set of machines within the Bordeaux 1 University Computing Center.
The history of LaBRI is inseparable from that of GRECO, and the Geocub server serves as a reminder that it was one of the pioneering laboratories in the field of fundamental research in software engineering, network development, and initiatives aimed at the industrial community.
See also the article in Sud-Ouest (dated February 12, 2026) + Poster (in attached documents).