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A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold for much less 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 US$25,000, 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.
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.
The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 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.
In computing, booting is the process of starting a computer as initiated via hardware such as a button or by a software command. After it is switched on, a computer's central processing unit (CPU) has no software in its main memory, so some process must load software into memory before it can be executed. This may be done by hardware or firmware in the CPU, or by a separate processor in the computer system.
RSX-11 is a discontinued family of multi-user real-time operating systems for PDP-11 computers created by Digital Equipment Corporation. In widespread use through the late 1970s and early 1980s, RSX-11 was influential in the development of later operating systems such as VMS and Windows NT.
RT-11 is a discontinued small, low-end, single-user real-time operating system for the full line of Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11 16-bit computers. RT-11 was first implemented in 1970. It was widely used for real-time computing systems, process control, and data acquisition across all PDP-11s. It was also used for low-cost general-use computing.
Microsoft BASIC is the foundation software product of the Microsoft company and evolved into a line of BASIC interpreters adapted for many different microcomputers. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first version of BASIC published by Microsoft as well as the first high-level programming language available for the Altair 8800 microcomputer.
OS/8 was the primary operating system used on the Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-8 minicomputer.
RSTS is a multi-user time-sharing operating system, initially developed by Evans Griffiths & Hart of Boston, and acquired by Digital Equipment Corporation for the PDP-11 series of 16-bit minicomputers. The first version of RSTS was implemented in 1970 by DEC software engineers that developed the TSS-8 time-sharing operating system for the PDP-8. The last version of RSTS was released in September 1992. RSTS-11 and RSTS/E are usually referred to just as "RSTS" and this article will generally use the shorter form.
A fat binary is a computer executable program or library which has been expanded with code native to multiple instruction sets which can consequently be run on multiple processor types. This results in a file larger than a normal one-architecture binary file, thus the name.
A COM file is a type of simple executable file. On the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX operating systems of the 1970s, .COM was used as a filename extension for text files containing commands to be issued to the operating system. With the introduction of Digital Research's CP/M, the type of files commonly associated with COM extension changed to that of executable files. This convention was later carried over to DOS. Even when complemented by the more general EXE file format for executables, the compact COM files remained viable and frequently used under DOS.
TSX-Plus is a multi-user operating system for the PDP-11/LSI-11 series of computers. It was developed by S&H Computer Systems, Inc. and is based on DEC's RT-11 single-user real-time operating system.
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 Professional 325 (PRO-325), Professional 350 (PRO-350), and Professional 380 (PRO-380) were PDP-11 compatible microcomputers introduced in 1982 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as high-end competitors to the IBM PC.
RADIX 50 or RAD50, is an uppercase-only character encoding created by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for use on their DECsystem, PDP, and VAX computers.
On-line Debugging Tool (ODT) was used to describe several debugger programs developed for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) hardware. Various operating systems including OS/8, RT-11, RSX-11, and RSTS/E implemented ODT as did the firmware console of all of the LSI-11-family processors including the 11/03, 11/23/24, 11/53, 11/73, and 11/83/84.
BASIC-11 was a dialect of the basic language for PDP-11 operating systems such as RSX-11, RT-11, TSX and TSX-Plus. It was a classic BASIC in that it used line numbers, supported line number editing, and classic function syntax. It provided extended support for user-defined functions, external sequential disk files, and linking with assembler language modules for device support and operating system interfaces.
Synergy DBL is a compiled, imperative programming language designed for business use. The language was originally called DBL; later it was referred to as Synergy Language; as of 2012 the official name is Synergy DBL. It is based on Digital Equipment Corporation’s DIBOL programming language.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), was a major American company in the computer industry. Founded in 1957 with $70,000 of venture capital, it became "the nation's second-largest computer company, after IBM." Its initial major impact was in minicomputers, but its later-introduced VAX and Alpha systems are still notable.
References
- ↑ "DCL dialog". March 1995.
- 1 2 "Cutting comes with TSX-Plus". Hardcopy. December 1984. pp. 54–63.
- ↑ Milton Campbell (January 1985). "The RT-11 Perspective". Hardcopy. p. 125.
- 1 2 3 "S&H TSX-Plus on 11/23, 11/34". Computerworld . December 1, 1980. p. 67.
efficient, general-purpose timesharing for up to 20 users on 11/23 and 11/34 based ...
- ↑ "TSX-Plus: Time Share RT-11". Hardcopy. October 1982. p. 9.
