From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Subject: Re: what is a MINC-11
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 06:07:54 GMT

In article <3355.168.uupcb@ssr.com> dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin)  writes:

>The LINC was the Laboratory INstrument Computer, and the MINC is the
>Mobile INstrument Computer.  It was a follow-on to the LINC, intended to
>be wheeled around to lab experiments and "plugged in". 

No way, there is no relationship between them.  The LINC was a non-commercial
machine and generally accepted as the first lab computer.  A MINC is merely a
mediocre DEC product intended for some lab market years later.  To say it is a
follow-on is like saying that a DEC PDP-8 is a computer and an IBM 360 is a
computer and that therefore the PDP-8 is a follow-on to the 360.

However, there actually is a bizarre "link" between them:

The LINC spawned the LINC-8 and eventually the PDP-12, and indirectly the
LAB-8/e options for the PDP-8/e.  Further, some of the peripherals for the
LAB-11 (UNIBUS) were done by the same group as the LAB-8/e stuff, but they
are clearly unrelated families of computers.

There was a software package on the LINC-8 called LABCOM that was ported to the
PDP-12 and became known as the CLINICAL-LAB-12 system.  This is virtually
entirely written in LINC code, and the PDP-8 portion is either nearly 
non-existant or relegated to the simlulation of missing LINC functions in
the LINC-8.  (The standard LINC-8 includes a package called PROGOFOP which
makes the missing LINC instructions work via an emulator trap program that
is entirely PDP-8 code.  It may surprise some people but the entire LINC
console on the left side of the LINC-8 is merely a PDP-8 peripheral and
its operation is 100% simulated!)

Thus, the CLINI-LAB code is essentially a LINC-only product, requiring some
support code because there are emulator traps in it to perform certain 
functions that are handled by PDP-8 code on either the LINC-8 or PDP-12 as
required by the respective systems.

Apparently there was a third party vendor (no, I don't know the name) who
built what we would call a LINC-11) which is more like a LINC-8 than a
PDP-12 in that there is more instructions requiring simulation while a
PDP-12 is essentially 100% "real".  The purpose of this machine was to
run a variant version of this same software package.

DEC did have an unofficial hand in the creation of the original LINC and
the DEC modules of the time were used to implement most of it.

But there also were LINC machines from yet another company called B. D. Spear.
They were called the micro-LINC 100 and 300.  The 100 was a basic 2K LINC,
only faster.  (I don't know if it could be expanded.) The 300 could be
expanded to 32K and is essentially compatible with the memory expansion of
the LINC side of a PDP-12, except that it is faster than any DEC-influenced
version of any LINC.

Needless to say, the MINC is an -11, so by the indirect route of that
vendor of the LINC and 11 together, it is a stretch to relate them as you do.
Certainly DEC stuff doesn't do that :-).

cjl
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