Message: 2
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2023 18:27:52 +0000
From: silcreval <silvercreekvalley(a)yahoo.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-8/A FPP8/A
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Message-ID: <4EF3AB13-972C-4EE0-8105-C11128DA4BFA(a)yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>Hi Bob
>Thanks - thats very interesting. I guess there was quite a >bit of overlap with the 11 and the 8/A so 'marketing' >stepped in :-)
Exactly what happened, you are correct. We did want to sell more 8 systems into labs... where small memory models made sense (256K words or less) and kept having this dream of a Fortran Machine that went fast for the times.
I don't recall exactly but I think one of the 11 models with FPU that got blown out of the water was the 11/60 (a harvard arch implementation by O'Loughlin iirc) that was a decent and very very reliable 11 (used pairs of them for a critical system and they were exceptionally reliable when compared with disk drives!!)
The 8A was (and still is) a good machine but some of us wanted to build a 10Mhz clock 8 but the cost would have put it in the wrong price range for the types of customers we were allowed to have.
bb