Origin of 'Straight 8' name - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

21 Dec 2018

...
 > people recently picked that to disambiguate them
from all the other
> -8's. 
So my assumption (that it was recent) seems to be incorrect; I heard that it
was in use in the 60's to differentiate it (e.g. for knowing what spares to
take). Alas, with the origin that far back in time, we'll probably never find
out what the connection was.

...
  From: Bill Degnan 
...
  The original PDP 11 was sold in two model options,
although the numbers
 did not appear on the faceplace, very clearly the model options were
 called PDP 11/10 and PDP 11/20. ...  The fact that the name does not
 appear on the front panel has caused every DEC historian to miss this
 factoid. 
Yeah, it tripped me to. Although after I sent that email, I went back and
looked, and it's called '-11/20' on all the documents I can find, including
the prints.

I'll check in the DEC archives (available on BitSavers), but I suspect the
"PDP-11" on the front panel was the result of something getting dropped in the
process of doing the panel, not the reasult of a name change by DEC.

	Noel