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Talk:Programmed Data Processor

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Atlant (talk | contribs) at 02:11, 18 December 2004 (→Disambiguation). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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

Disambiguation

Atlant's addition of the expansion "Plasma Display Panel" suggests the need to rename this page and add a PDP disambiguation page. Any suggestions on the best new name for this page? I'd favor "DEC PDP computers" or "DEC PDP series computers". --Brouhaha 21:22, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why not just plain old Programmed Data Processor? I can't imagine anyone typing "DEC PDP computers" in, even as a search. They're gonna type PDP, and go from there, so almost any page name will do, and that one has the advantage of being the acryonym expansion. Another OK choice would be PDP (DEC) (two acronyms for the price of one, I love it).

Although I certainly hear "PDP" used often to refer to plasma displays, it probably won't become a crisis until we turn up another PDP acronym expansion or two. For now, I'd probably let things stand and see what develops. We may also want to consider "PDP (computer)" as the new name for this page; that seems to follow a very common Wiki disambiguation style. Another approach would be to rename the page to "Programmed Data Processor" and have some sort of redirect or disambig page cover the "PDP" acronym.

One thing I do suspect is that we'll have a fair number of hyperlinks to repair if we rename this page. :(

Atlant 21:32, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Not too many, actually. Maybe a page-full - it'll only take 15 minutes (if the Wiki is running fast). Noel (talk) 01:06, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Okay, let's head in the direction of making this page "Programmed Data Processor" (which is probably the title that best fits the Wiki style guide), make a PDP disambig page, and we'll police up all the broken links. If you don't beat me too it, I'll probably try to get this done tomorrow.

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