PDP-11/20 vd one that just says pdp 11 what are the date differences?? OEM?

[william degnan]

On Feb 22, 2016 4:39 AM, "Paul Birkel" <pbirkel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Agreed; I neglected to mention that mine also is marked in that manner!
> Seems like DEC had ramped up to about 15-20 machines/day by mid-September.
>
> Guess that the front panel graphics guys "didn't yet get the memo".  Or
> maybe someone was hedging their bets against an ignominious sales failure
in
> the initial front panel production?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Christian
> Corti
> Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 4:32 AM
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> Subject: RE: PDP-11/20 vd one that just says pdp 11 what are the date
> differences?? OEM?
>
> On Mon, 22 Feb 2016, Paul Birkel wrote:
> > My PDP-11 is labeled as "S-386" and dated 9/23/70, which I guess makes
> > it fairly early in the production run (but I do wonder what the
> > initial manufacturing rate was given the relative riskiness of this
> > new architecture).  Anyone have S# and dates for "plain 11" vs.
> > 11/20-marked for comparison?
>
> Our PDP-11 is labeled as "S-308", the date is 9/16/70. And I think they
> called it PDP11-20 from the beginning, as the model number above the
serial
> number says "M11-20"
>
> Christian
>

I have an original 1969 PDP 11 brochure.  In it there are two PDP 11 model
configurations to choose from; the 10 and the 20.  For me at least this
throws into question the whole "...the 10 first came out with the 5
in1972..." story everyone repeats over and over, unless one must have a
"10" printed on the console in order to accept a computer model's
existence.  DEC must not have sold many original 10 models, and/or everyone
who has a 10 does not realize that's what they have.  But, facts are facts
and the brochure and price guide I have is what it is.  Hoping some here
will check for themselves and consider it misleading at least to simply
call the original PDP-11 a "pdp 11/20 without the nameplate".  In short,
the original bare-bones pdp11 was the pdp-11 10, the fully-equipped version
was the pdp-11 20.

Why DEC temporarily dropped it's pdp-11 10 model from the product line and
from newer price sheets I can't say.   Certainly the "10" was gone when DEC
rebranded their front nameplates to read "pdp 11/20".  I believe the 1969
brochure is on bitsavers, or I think my website has a copy you can download.

Bill Degnan
twitter: billdeg
vintagecomputer.net