From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: PDP ftp archive
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 92 00:36:56 GMT

In article <1992Nov20.142937.9123@news.uiowa.edu>, jones@pyrite (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
>For your amusement, here's a table of the PDP's, from the alt.sys.pdp8
>FAQ posting:
>
>	DEC built a number of different computers under the PDP label, with
>	a huge range of price and performance.  The largest of these are
>	fully worthy of large computer centers with big support staffs.
>	Here is the list of PDP computers:
>
>	MODEL  DATE  PRICE     BITS  COMMENTS
>	=====  ====  ========  ====  =====
>	PDP-1  1959  $120,000  18    DEC's first computer
>	PDP-2                  24    Never built?
>	PDP-3                  36    Only 1 was ever built.
>	PDP-4                  18    DEC used these in their factory.
>	PDP-5  1963   $30,000  12    The ancestor of the PDP-8.
>	PDP-6                  36    DEC's first really big computer.

				     (only 23 were ever built, cause KO hated
				     big MIS-type machines)

>	PDP-7   <66  ~$60,000  18    Widely used for real-time control.
>	PDP-8  1965   $18,500  12    The smallest and cheapest PDP.
>	PDP-9  1966   $35,000  18    An upgrade of the PDP-7.
>	PDP-10 1967            36    A PDP-6 upgrade, great timesharing.

				     Not exactly--more a revival.

>	PDP-11 1970   $10,800  16    DEC's first and only 16 bit computer.
>	PDP-12 1969   $27,900  12    Originally known as the LINC-8/I.
>	PDP-13                       Bad luck, there was no such machine.
>	PDP-14                       A ROM-based controller, not a computer!
>	PDP-15 1970   $16,500  18    A TTL upgrade of the PDP-9.
>	PDP-16 1972            8/16  A register-transfer module system.
>
>	Corrections and additions to this list are welcome!  The prices
>	given above are the prices for minimal systems in the year the
>	machine was first introduced.  The bits column indicates the word
>	size.  It's worth noting that the DEC PDP-10 became the
>	DECSYSTEM-20 as a result of marketing considerations, and DEC's

	Hmmph.  Leave it to the 12-bit crowd to get it wrong.

	The DEC-20 is the outgrowth of a smart decision by DEC:  License the
	TENEX operating system written for the Dec-10 by Bolt, Beranek, and
	Newman, which featured real demand-paged virtual memory, and sell it
	as an *alternative to*, not a replacement for, Tops-10, which was the
	descendant of the *batch-processing* operating system on the PDP-6 and
	early PDP-10s.

>	VAX series of computers began as the Virtual Address eXtension of
>	the PDP-11/78.
>
>Although DEC documentation occasionally used the term PDP generically,
>without a qualifying number, this was generally used as a synonym for
>"DEC computer" and not as a reference to a specific machine.
>
>Nowdays, when I hear someone refer to a PDP, or to PDP collectors, I
>assume they're a fairly ignorant newbie unaware of the incredible
>variation between the different DEC PDP architectures.

Un-huh.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:16363 alt.folklore.urban:28933