 | |
 | |
| Developer | Digital Equipment Corporation |
|---|---|
| Product family | Programmed Data Processor |
| Type | Minicomputer |
| Release date | 1966 |
| Units sold | 445 |
| Media | Paper tape |
| Platform | DEC 18-bit |
| Mass | 750 pounds (340 kg) |
| Predecessor | PDP-7 |
| Successor | PDP-15 |
The PDP-9, the fourth of the five 18-bit minicomputers produced by Digital Equipment Corporation, was introduced in 1966. [1] : P.10 A total of 445 PDP-9 systems were produced, [2] of which 40 were the compact, low-cost PDP-9/L units. [3]
The 18-bit PDP systems preceding the PDP-9 are the PDP-1, PDP-4 and PDP-7. Its successor is the PDP-15.
The PDP-9, which is "two metres wide and about 75cm deep," [4] 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 750 pounds (340 kg). [5] : 1-7–1-8 The PDP-9/L has a memory cycle time of 1.5 microseconds, and weighs about 900 pounds (410 kg). [6] : 1-1, 15-8
It is DEC's first microprogrammed machine. [7] [5] : 3-16
A typical configuration included: [2]
Among the improvements of the PDP-9 over its PDP-7 predecessor are:
User/university-based research projects for extending the PDP-9 include:
The system came with an OS that functions as single-user keyboard monitor, called ADSS (ADvanced Software System). [12] DECsys provided an interactive, single-user, program development environment for Fortran and assembly language programs. [13]
Both FORTRAN II [2] and FORTRAN IV [14] were implemented for the PDP-9.
MUMPS was originally developed on the PDP-7, and ran on several PDP-9s at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
The PDP-7, of which 120 were sold, [1] : p.8 was described as "highly successful". [2] The PDP-9 sold 445 units. Both have submodels, the PDP-7A [NB 1] and the PDP-9/L, [NB 2] neither of which accounted for a substantial percentage of sales. [1] [NB 3]
Digital Equipment Corporation, 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.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especially as the TOPS-10 operating system became widely used.
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 PDP-1 is the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1959. It is famous for being the most important computer in the creation of hacker culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bolt, Beranek and Newman and elsewhere. The PDP-1 is the original hardware for playing history's first game on a minicomputer, Steve Russell's Spacewar!
The PDP-8 is a family of 12-bit minicomputers that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units being sold over the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pioneering LINC but has a smaller instruction set, which is an expanded version of the PDP-5 instruction set. Similar machines from DEC are the PDP-12 which is a modernized version of the PDP-8 and LINC concepts, and the PDP-14 industrial controller system.
The PDP–11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the late 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, making it one of DEC's most successful product lines. The PDP-11 is considered by some experts to be the most popular minicomputer.
A floating-point unit is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating-point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root. Some FPUs can also perform various transcendental functions such as exponential or trigonometric calculations, but the accuracy can be low, so some systems prefer to compute these functions in software.
The PDP-7 is an 18-bit minicomputer produced by Digital Equipment Corporation as part of the PDP series. Introduced in 1964, shipped since 1965, it was the first to use their Flip-Chip technology. With a cost of US$72,000, 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.
The PDP-6, short for Programmed Data Processor model 6, is a computer developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) during 1963 and first delivered in the summer of 1964. It was an expansion of DEC's existing 18-bit systems to use a 36-bit data word, which was at that time a common word size for large machines like IBM mainframes. The system was constructed using the same germanium transistor-based System Module layout as DEC's earlier machines, like the PDP-1 and PDP-4.
OS/8 is the primary operating system used on the Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-8 minicomputer.
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.
The PDP-4 was the successor to the Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-1.
The PDP-15 was the fifth and last of the 18-bit minicomputers produced by Digital Equipment Corporation. The PDP-1 was first delivered in December 1959 and the first PDP-15 was delivered in February 1970. More than 400 of these successors to the PDP-9 were ordered within the first eight months.
The SDS 930 was a commercial 24-bit computer using bipolar junction transistors sold by Scientific Data Systems. It was announced in December 1963, with first installations in June 1964.
TSS/8 is a discontinued time-sharing operating system co-written by Don Witcraft and John Everett at Digital Equipment Corporation in 1967. DEC also referred to it as Timeshared-8 and later the EduSystem 50.
In computer architecture, 18-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 18 bits wide. Also, 18-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size.
The PDP-11 architecture is a 16-bit CISC instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It is implemented by central processing units (CPUs) and microprocessors used in PDP-11 minicomputers. It was in wide use during the 1970s, but was eventually overshadowed by the more powerful VAX architecture in the 1980s.
The PDP-8/e was a model of the PDP-8 line of minicomputers, designed by the Digital Equipment Corporation to be a general purpose computer that inexpensively met the needs of the average user while also being capable of modular expansion to meet the more specific needs of advanced user.
Philco was one of the pioneers of transistorized computers. After the company developed the surface barrier transistor, which was much faster than previous point-contact types, it was awarded contracts for military and government computers. Commercialized derivatives of some of these designs became successful business and scientific computers. The TRANSAC Model S-1000 was released as a scientific computer. The TRANSAC S-2000 mainframe computer system was first produced in 1958, and a family of compatible machines, with increasing performance, was released over the next several years.
The WD16 is a 16-bit microprocessor introduced by Western Digital in October 1976. It is based on the MCP-1600 chipset, a general-purpose design that was also used to implement the DEC LSI-11 low-end minicomputer and the Pascal MicroEngine processor. The three systems differed primarily in their microcode, giving each system a unique instruction set architecture (ISA).
