Multiprocessor Qbus PDP-11

Interestingly enough, I remember another machine that was also called 11/74; it existed in the RSTS/E lab in Merrimack (NH). That one wasn't an MP machine; instead, it was an 11/70 with additional microcode to add the CIS (strings and decimal arithmetic) instruction set. COBOL-11 could use this, and indeed CIS was a supported product in some later machines. But the 11/74 CIS machine never saw the light of day. I don't know why not. Perhaps it was not cost-effective given that it was a physically large machine, no longer a state of the art architecture for the time (around 1980). One comment I heard is that it was forced to be canceled because it could run COBOL faster than a VAX-11/780. No idea if that was true (either the speed claim or the cancelation claim). It has a faint ring of plausibility to it; when the 780 came out, DEC made some noises that PDP-11 would disappear within just a handful of years. It didn't take them all that long to realize the absurdity of that notion. paul