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PDP-7
The PDP-7 is an 18-bit computing, 18-bit minicomputer produced by Digital Equipment Corporation as part of the Programmed Data Processor, PDP series. Introduced in 1964, shipped since 1965, it was the first to use their Flip-Chip module, Flip-Chip technology. With a cost of , it was cheap but powerful by the standards of the time. The PDP-7 is the third of Digital's 18-bit machines, with essentially the same instruction set architecture as the PDP-4 and the PDP-9. Hardware The PDP-7 was the first wire wrap, wire-wrapped PDP computer. The computer has a memory cycle time of and an add time of . Input/output (I/O) includes a keyboard, printer, punched tape and dual transport DECtape drives (type 555). The standard Magnetic-core memory, core memory capacity is but expandable up to The PDP-7 weighs about . Software DECsys, the first operating system for DEC's 18-bit computer family (and DEC's first operating system for a computer smaller than its 36-bit timesharing systems) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Travel (video Game)
''Space Travel'' is an early video game developed by Ken Thompson in 1969 that simulation video game, simulates travel in the Solar System. The player flies their ship around a two-dimensional scale model of the Solar System with no objectives other than to attempt to land on various planets and moons. The player can move and turn the ship, and adjust the overall speed by adjusting the scale of the simulation. The ship is affected by the single strongest gravity, gravitational pull of the astronomical bodies. The game was Software development, developed at Bell Labs before the rise of the commercial video game industry in the early history of video games, and was ported during 1969 from the Multics operating system to the General Comprehensive Operating System, GECOS operating system on the GE-600 series, GE 635 computer, and then to the PDP-7 computer. As a part of porting the game to the PDP-7, Thompson developed his own operating system, which later formed the core of the Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Programmed Data Processor
Programmed Data Processor (PDP), referred to by some customers, media and authors as "Programmable Data Processor," is a term used by the Digital Equipment Corporation from 1957 to 1990 for several lines of minicomputers. The name "PDP" intentionally avoids the use of the term "computer". At the time of the first PDPs, computers had a reputation of being large, complicated, and expensive machines. The venture capitalists behind Digital (especially Georges Doriot) would not support Digital's attempting to build a "computer" and the term "minicomputer" had not yet been coined. So instead, Digital used their existing line of logic modules to build a ''Programmed Data Processor'' and aimed it at a market that could not afford the larger computers. The various PDP machines can generally be grouped into families based on word length. Series Members of the PDP series include: ;PDP-1: The original PDP, an 18-bit computing, 18-bit four-19-inch rack, rack machine used in early tim ... [...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 he was 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 early 1960s. The company produced a series of machines known as the Programmed Data Processor, 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 t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PDP-9
The PDP-9, the fourth of the five 18-bit minicomputers produced by Digital Equipment Corporation, was introduced in 1966. A total of 445 PDP-9 systems were produced, of which 40 were the compact, low-cost PDP-9/L units.. History The 18-bit PDP systems preceding the PDP-9 are the PDP-1, PDP-4 and PDP-7. Its successor is the PDP-15. Hardware The PDP-9, which is "two metres wide and about 75cm deep," is approximately twice the speed of the PDP-7. It was built using discrete transistors, and has an optional integrated vector graphics terminal. The PDP-9 has a memory cycle time of 1 microsecond, and weighs about . The PDP-9/L has a memory cycle time of 1.5 microseconds, and weighs about . It is DEC's first microprogrammed machine. A typical configuration included: * 300 cps paper tape reader * 50 cps paper tape punch * DECtape for operating system and user files * 10 cps console teleprinter, Model 33 KSR Among the improvements of the PDP-9 over its PDP-7 predecessor are: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Thompson
Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4, 1943) is an American pioneer of computer science. Thompson worked at Bell Labs for most of his career where he designed and implemented the original Unix operating system. He also invented the B (programming language), B programming language, the direct predecessor to the C (programming language), C language, and was one of the creators and early developers of the Plan 9 from Bell Labs, Plan 9 operating system. Since 2006, Thompson has worked at Google, where he co-developed the Go (programming language), Go language. A recipient of the Turing award, he is considered one of the greatest computer programmers of all time. Other notable contributions included his work on regular expressions and early computer text editors QED (text editor), QED and ed (text editor), ed, the definition of the UTF-8 encoding, and his work on computer chess that included the creation of endgame tablebases and the chess machine Belle (chess machine), Belle. He won ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
18-bit Computing
Eighteen binary digits have 262,144 (1000000 octal, 40000 hexadecimal) distinct combinations. Eighteen bits was a common word size for smaller computers in the 1960s, when large computers often using 36 bit words and 6-bit character sets, sometimes implemented as extensions of BCD, were the norm. There were also 18-bit teletypes experimented with in the 1940s. Example computer architectures Possibly the most well-known 18-bit computer architectures are the PDP-1, PDP-4, PDP-7, PDP-9 and PDP-15 minicomputers produced by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1960 to 1975. Digital's PDP-10 used 36-bit words but had 18-bit addresses. The UNIVAC division of Remington Rand produced several 18-bit computers, including the UNIVAC 418 and several military systems. The IBM 7700 Data Acquisition System was announced by IBM on December 2, 1963. The BCL Molecular 18 was a group of systems designed and manufactured in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s. The NASA Standard Spacecraft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
B (programming Language)
B is a programming language developed at Bell Labs circa 1969 by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. B was derived from BCPL, and its name may possibly be a contraction of BCPL. Thompson's coworker Dennis Ritchie speculated that the name might be based on Bon, an earlier, but unrelated, programming language that Thompson designed for use on Multics. B was designed for recursive, non-numeric, machine-independent applications, such as system and language software. It was a typeless language, with the only data type being the underlying machine's natural memory word format, whatever that might be. Depending on the context, the word was treated either as an integer or a memory address. As machines with ASCII processing became common, notably the DEC PDP-11 that arrived at Bell Labs, support for character data stuffed in memory words became important. The typeless nature of the language was seen as a disadvantage, which led Thompson and Ritchie to develop an expanded version of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is an exceptionally large machine. Minicomputers in the traditional technical sense covered here are only small relative to generally even earlier and much bigger machines. 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 minicomputer vendor companies formed. Only a half-dozen remained by the mid-1980s. When single-chip CPU microprocessors appeared in the 1970s, the defi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Living Computer Museum
Living Computers: Museum + Labs (LCM+L) was a computer and technology museum located in the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. LCM+L showcased vintage computers which provided interactive sessions, either through time-sharing operating systems or single-user interfaces. This gave users a chance to actually use the computers online or in-person in the museum. An expansion had added direct touch experiences with contemporary technologies such as self-driving cars, the internet of things, big data, and robotics. LCM+L had also hosted a wide range of educational programs and events in their state-of-the art classroom and lab spaces. According to an archived version of LCM+L's website, their goal was "to breathe life back into our machines so the public can experience what it was like to see them, hear them, and interact with them. We make our systems accessible by allowing people to come and interact with them, and by making them available over the Internet." The museum cl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PDP-4
The PDP-4 was the successor to the Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-1. History This 18-bit machine, first shipped in 1962, was a compromise: "with slower memory and different packaging" than the PDP-1, but priced at $65,000 - less than half the price of its predecessor. All later 18-bit PDP machines (PDP-7, 7, PDP-9, 9 and PDP-15, 15) are based on a similar, but enlarged instruction set, more powerful than, but based on the same concepts as, the 12-bit PDP-5/PDP-8 series. Approximately 54 were sold. Hardware The system's memory cycle is 8 microseconds, compared to 5 microseconds for the PDP-1. The PDP-4 weighs about . Mass storage Both the PDP-1 and the PDP-4 were introduced as paper tape-based systems. The only use, if any, for IBM-compatible 200 Magnetic tape data storage#Bytes per inch, BPI or 556 BPI magnetic tape was for data. The use of "mass storage" drums - not even a megabyte and non-removable - were an available option, but were not in the spirit of the “per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MUMPS
MUMPS ("Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System"), or M, is an imperative, high-level programming language with an integrated transaction processing key–value database. It was originally developed at Massachusetts General Hospital for managing patient medical records and hospital laboratory information systems. MUMPS technology has since expanded as the predominant database for health information systems and electronic health records in the United States. MUMPS-based information systems, such as Epic Systems', provide health information services for over 78% of patients across the U.S. A unique feature of the MUMPS technology is its integrated Query language, database language, allowing direct, high-speed read-write access to permanent disk storage. History 1960s-1970s - Genesis MUMPS was developed by Neil Pappalardo, Robert A. Greenes, and Curt Marble in Dr. Octo Barnett's lab at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston during 1966 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
