[TUHS] Why did PDPs become so popular?

Henry Bent henry.r.bent at gmail.com
Sun Dec 31 12:47:02 AEST 2017


On 29 December 2017 at 19:54, Lawrence Stewart <stewart at serissa.com> wrote:

>
> I was part of the team that built the first Alpha machine, the Alpha
> Demonstration Unit, see
> ftp://ftp.linux-mips.org/pub/linux/mips/people/macro/DEC/
> DTJ/DTJ803/DTJ803PF.PDF
>

I couldn't access this on my phone - no FTP client - so I blindly assumed
that it was DEC Technical Journal Vol. 8 no. 3.  That turned out to be
completely untrue, but in a perhaps amusing way - one of the articles was
Bob Supnik discussing the reasoning behind the original development of
SIM(H), intended to preserve computing history.

As far as the article you posted - from Vol. 4 no. 3 - the idea that 35
prototypes were created in ECL and running as a multiprocessor system,
taking over 4kW not including the front end, is absolutely remarkable to
me.  Does any of that original code for the front end still exist?

-Henry
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