Talk:Programmed Data Processor

Chips and internals

DEC was still selling PDP-8 chips by the bushel when I left (involuntarily) in 93 or whenever, and also the J11 (11/70 with MP hooks) chips. Anybody know if that's still happening? If so, it should be added to this article. Also, someone once told me that the PDP-8 was "just like the diagrams in CS-101, so everybody understood it", but since I never took any computer science, I couldn't say. --Ortolan88

I don't recall DEC ever actually selling PDP-8 chips as such. Intersil and Harris sold the 6100 and 6120, which DEC used in the VT78 and DECmate products. AFAIK, both have been discontinued.

I don't think the original LSI-11 chip set or the 11/23 chip set were ever offered for sale; they were only available in board-level products and systems. The T11 and J11 chips were sold as chips, but are long since obsolete. I'm not sure about the T11, but the J11 was fabbed by Harris for DEC.

The T11 and J11 never sold well enough for DEC to bother redesigning them in a more modern semiconductor process, so it became economically unviable to continue production.

The T11 was used in some Atari coin-operated video games. I've seen the J11 on some VMEbus processor cards, and in PDP-11 emulation boards for PCs. --Brouhaha

typo?

CHeaper ? slower, cleaper alternative

PDP-X and Data General NOVA

The PDP-X did not resemble the NOVA. See http://simh.trailing-edge.com/docs/pdpx.pdf
--Peter Lund/82.143.195.87 13:27, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I heard that the PDP-2 was built

I heard that the PDP-2 was built and there is still some being used commerially

PDP-14 1 bit??

I can't really believe that the PDP-14 was 1-bit. This site:

PDP-14

Claims it was 12-bit. Perhaps it is a typo? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.238.44.211 (talk) 16:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

They are both right. According to the reference given in the article, "The PDP-14 was a 12 bit machine with a 1 bit register."

I assume that means that internally, the low-level hardware was a serial computer clocking through one bit at a time, but at the assembly-language level, the instruction set supported 12 bit data values. See also what the Motorola MC14500B says about the PDP-14. --68.0.124.33 (talk) 03:29, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Reason for name PDP

I worked as a software specialist for DEC from Feb 1980 - Jan 1992, and the reason we were told that it was called a PDP, was that for purposes of submitting proposals and other sales documents to the US Government Procurement Office, that the US Government only thought that "computers" were made by IBM. Therefore, we did not make computers, but Programmable Data Processors.

Requested move

Programmed Data Processor → Programmable Data ProcessorProgrammable Data Processor – The article itself supports thie change along with several talk commemts. I no longer have PDP manuals, but as I recall, DEC always referred to the PDP series as "Programmable Data Processor", not "Programmed Data Processor."