New subject: PDP-8/A FPP8/A

28 Feb 2023

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2023 18:27:52 +0000
From: silcreval &lt;silvercreekvalley(a)yahoo.com&gt;
Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-8/A FPP8/A
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Message-ID: &lt;4EF3AB13-972C-4EE0-8105-C11128DA4BFA(a)yahoo.com&gt;
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...
 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