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LINC
The LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer) is a 12-bit, 2048-word transistorized computer. The LINC is considered by some the first minicomputer and a forerunner to the personal computer. Originally named the "Linc", suggesting the project's origins at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, it was renamed LINC after the project moved from the Lincoln Laboratory. The LINC was designed by Wesley A. Clark and Charles Molnar. The LINC and other "MIT Group" machines were designed at MIT and eventually built by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Spear Inc. of Waltham, Massachusetts (later a division of Becton, Dickinson and Company). The LINC sold for more than $40,000 at the time. A typical configuration included an enclosed 6'X20" rack; four boxes holding (1) two tape drives, (2) display scope and input knobs, (3) control console and (4) data terminal interface; and a keyboard. The LINC interfaced well with laboratory experiments. Analog inputs and outputs were part of the basic design. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LINC Computer (5900038265)
The LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer) is a 12-bit, 2048-word transistorized computer. The LINC is considered by some the first minicomputer and a forerunner to the personal computer. Originally named the "Linc", suggesting the project's origins at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, it was renamed LINC after the project moved from the Lincoln Laboratory. The LINC was designed by Wesley A. Clark and Charles Molnar. The LINC and other "MIT Group" machines were designed at MIT and eventually built by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Spear Inc. of Waltham, Massachusetts (later a division of Becton, Dickinson and Company). The LINC sold for more than $40,000 at the time. A typical configuration included an enclosed 6'X20" rack; four boxes holding (1) two tape drives, (2) display scope and input knobs, (3) control console and (4) data terminal interface; and a keyboard. The LINC interfaced well with laboratory experiments. Analog inputs and outputs were part of the basic design. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linc-8
LINC-8 was the name of a minicomputer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation between 1966 and 1969. It combined a LINC computer with a PDP-8 in one cabinet, thus being able to run programs written for either of the two architectures. Architecture The LINC-8 contained one PDP-8 CPU and one LINC CPU, partially emulated by the PDP-8. At any one time, the computer was in either 'LINC mode' or 'PDP-8 mode' - both processors could not run in parallel. Instructions were provided to switch between modes. In the LINC-8, all interrupts were handled by the PDP-8 CPU, and programs that relied on the interrupt architecture of the LINC could not be run. The LINC was a 12-bit ones' complement accumulator machine, whereas the PDP-8, while also a 12-bit accumulator machine, operated in two's complement arithmetic. Memory addressing on the two architectures was also different. On the LINC, the full address space was divided into 1024-word ''segments'', two of which were selected for use at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LINC-8
LINC-8 was the name of a minicomputer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation between 1966 and 1969. It combined a LINC computer with a PDP-8 in one cabinet, thus being able to run programs written for either of the two architectures. Architecture The LINC-8 contained one PDP-8 CPU and one LINC CPU, partially emulated by the PDP-8. At any one time, the computer was in either 'LINC mode' or 'PDP-8 mode' - both processors could not run in parallel. Instructions were provided to switch between modes. In the LINC-8, all interrupts were handled by the PDP-8 CPU, and programs that relied on the interrupt architecture of the LINC could not be run. The LINC was a 12-bit ones' complement accumulator machine, whereas the PDP-8, while also a 12-bit accumulator machine, operated in two's complement arithmetic. Memory addressing on the two architectures was also different. On the LINC, the full address space was divided into 1024-word ''segments'', two of which were selected for use at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DECtape
DECtape, originally called Microtape, is a magnetic tape data storage medium used with many Digital Equipment Corporation computers, including the PDP-6, PDP-8, LINC-8, PDP-9, PDP-10, PDP-11, PDP-12, and the PDP-15. On DEC's 32-bit systems, VAX/VMS support for it was implemented but did not become an official part of the product lineup. DECtapes are 3/4 inch (19 mm) wide, and formatted into blocks of data that can each be read or written individually. Each tape stores 184K 12-bit PDP-8 words or 144K 18-bit words. Block size is 128 12-bit words (for the 12-bit machines), or 256 18-bit words for the other machines (16, 18, 32, or 36 bit systems). From a programming point of view, because the system is block-oriented and allows random seeking, DECtape behaves like a very slow disk drive. Origins DECtape has its origin in the LINCtape tape system, which was originally designed by Wesley Clark at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory as an integral part of the LINC computer. There a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Allen Wilkes
Mary Allen Wilkes (born September 25, 1937) is a lawyer, former computer programmer and logic designer, known for her work with the LINC computer, now recognized by many as the world's first "personal computer". Career Wilkes was born in Chicago, Illinois and graduated from Wellesley College in 1959 where she majored in philosophy and theology. Wilkes planned to become a lawyer, but was discouraged by friends and mentors from pursuing law because of the challenges women faced in the field. A geography teacher in the eighth grade had told Wilkes, "Mary Allen, when you grow up, you ought to be a computer programmer." She worked in the field as one of the first programmers for a number of years before pursuing law and becoming an attorney in 1975. MIT Wilkes worked under Oliver Selfridge and Benjamin Gold on the Speech Recognition Project at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts from 1959 to 1960, programming the IBM 704 and the IBM 709. She joined the Digital Comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until forced to resign in 1992, after the company had gone into precipitous decline. The company produced many different product lines over its history. It is best known for the work in the minicomputer market starting in the mid-1960s. The company produced a series of machines known as the PDP line, with the PDP-8 and PDP-11 being among the most successful minis in history. Their success was only surpassed by another DEC product, the late-1970s VAX "supermini" systems that were designed to replace the PDP-11. Although a number of competitors had successfully competed with Digital through the 1970s, the VAX cemented the company's place as a leading vendor in the computer space. As microcomputers improved in the late 1980s, especially wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PDP-12
The PDP-12 (Programmed Data Processor) was created by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1969 and was marketed specifically for science and engineering.see Mini-Computer section and press see more, then press see more again It was the third in the LINC family and its main uses were for applications in chemistry, applied psychology, patient monitoring and industrial testing. It is the combination of the LINC computer and the PDP-8 and can run programs for either computer. It features a single central processor with two distinct operating modes, each with its own instruction set that allows it to run both computers' programs. PDP-12 Basic System weighed about . Because it is the combination of two different computers it is very versatile. It can be a laboratory-oriented machine with several facilities for I/O, auxiliary storage, and control and sensing for external equipment or a general purpose computer with a flexible I/O capability that can support multiple peripheral device ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Molnar
Charles Edwin Molnar (1935–1996) was a co-developer of one of the first minicomputers, the LINC (Laboratory Instrument Computer), while a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1962. His collaborator was Wesley A. Clark. The LINC originated decades before the advent of the personal computer. Its development was the result of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) program that placed 20 copies of an early LINC prototype in selected biomedical research laboratories nationwide. Later, the LINC was produced in greater numbers by Digital Equipment Corporation and other computer manufacturers. Later he was on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis. Charlie Molnar was also well known as a pioneer in the modeling of the auditory system, especially numerical models of the function of the cochlea (the inner ear). When he died in 1996, he was working at Sun Microsystems on asynchronous circuits with Ivan Sutherland. Molnar received a bachelor's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PDP-5
The PDP-5 was Digital Equipment Corporation's first 12-bit computer, introduced in 1963. History An earlier 12-bit computer, named LINC has been described as the first minicomputer and also "the first modern personal computer." It had 2,048 12-bit words, and the first LINC was built in 1962. DEC's founder, Ken Olsen, had worked with both it and a still earlier computer, the 18-bit 64,000-word TX-0, at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. Neither of these machines was mass-produced. Applicability Although the LINC computer was intended primarily for laboratory use, the PDP-5's 12-bit system had a far wider range of use. An example of DEC's "The success of the PDP-5 ... proved that a market for minicomputers did exist" is: * "Data-processing computers have accomplished for mathematicians what the wheel did for transportation" * "Very reliable data was obtained with ..." * "A PDP-5 computer was used very successfully aboard EvergreenU. S. Coast Guard Oceanographic Vessel — ''Evergree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
12-bit
Possibly the best-known 12-bit CPU is the PDP-8 and its relatives, such as the Intersil 6100 microprocessor produced in various forms from August 1963 to mid-1990. Many analog to digital converters (ADCs) have a 12-bit resolution. Some PIC microcontrollers use a 12-bit word size. 12 binary digits, or 3 nibbles (a 'tribble'), have 4096 (10000 octal, 1000 hexadecimal) distinct combinations. Hence, a microprocessor with 12-bit memory addresses can directly access 4096 words (4 Kw) of word-addressable memory. At a time when six-bit character codes were common a 12-bit word, which could hold two characters, was a convenient size. IBM System/360 instruction formats use a 12-bit displacement field which, added to the contents of a base register, can address 4096 bytes of memory. List of 12-bit computer systems * Digital Equipment Corporation ** PDP-5 ** PDP-8 *** DECmate, a personal computer based on the Intersil 6100 ** PDP-12 ** PDP-14 * Ford EEC I automotive engine control unit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ''The New York Times'' suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than (), with an input-output device such as a teleprinter and at least four thousand words of memory, that is capable of running programs in a higher level language, such as Fortran or BASIC. The class formed a distinct group with its own software architectures and operating systems. Minis were designed for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and communication switching as distinct from calculation and record keeping. Many were sold indirectly to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for final end use application. During the two decade lifetime of the minicomputer class (1965–1985), almost 100 companies formed and only a half ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ''The New York Times'' suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than (), with an input-output device such as a teleprinter and at least four thousand words of memory, that is capable of running programs in a higher level language, such as Fortran or BASIC. The class formed a distinct group with its own software architectures and operating systems. Minis were designed for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and communication switching as distinct from calculation and record keeping. Many were sold indirectly to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for final end use application. During the two decade lifetime of the minicomputer class (1965–1985), almost 100 companies formed and only a half ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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