OT - sort of

From: Tony Duell Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 1:35 PM PDP-1: 18 bits, 1960-1964 PDP-2: 24 bits, paper design, never built PDP-3: 36 bits, one built by a customer (DEC would sell you parts and plans) an extended PDP-1, unrelated to later 36-bit systems PDP-4: 18 bits, 1962-1964; 5/8 the power at 2/3 the price. Not popular. PDP-5: 12 bits, 1962-1964 PDP-6: 36 bits, 1964-1965; 23 built, nearly bankrupted DEC; first commercial system from any manufacturer with timesharing hardware built in from the start; intended for AI research (LISP creator John McCarthy advised on the design) as well as general computing PDP-7: 18 bits, 1964-1966; DEC's most successful model to that time, first use of FlipChips PDP-8: 12 bits, 1965-1967; reimplementation of PDP-5 in FlipChips, first bus architecture from DEC PDP-9: 18 bits, 1966-1969; smaller, faster PDP-7 PDP-10: 36 bits, 1967-1970+; FlipChip implementation of PDP-6 architecture PDP-11: 16 bits, 1969-1990; DEC surrendered to the 8-bit byte IBM disease PDP-12: 12 bits, 1970?; PDP-8/i with additional LINC capabilities PDP-14: build-it-yourself PDP-15: 18 bits, 1970-1975; added index register to PDP-4/7/9 architecture, capable of addressing up to 128K words PDP-16: build-it-yourself They skipped 13, and stopped calling new systems PDP-x. The follow models of the PDP-10 were christened DECsystem-10 and DECSYSTEM-20 (defined at first by the processor, and after a customer revolt by the microcode and OS in the later models). NB: I didn't bother to go look at the exact dates in Bell, McNamara & Mudge. Those are close enough for government work. Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer Vulcan, Inc. 505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900 Seattle, WA 98104 mailto:RichA at vulcan.com mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.PDPplanet.org/ http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/