[alt.folklore.computers] TECO on a DEC-System 10

bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) (01/16/90)

>Which brings up an older question: it (sort of) makes sense, in a brit-
>english kinda way, to name a vacuum cleaner a "Vax", but why would anyone
>name a *computer* a "VAX"?

Virtual Address eXtension.

The story goes that it was originally designed as a box to be attached
to PDP-11's to help solve the memory address squeeze on those boxes
(basically 16-bit tho various tricks had been employed to extend that
a little.)

-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die, Purveyors to the Trade         | bzs@world.std.com
1330 Beacon St, Brookline, MA 02146, (617) 739-0202 | {xylogics,uunet}world!bzs

cfe+@andrew.cmu.edu (Craig F. Everhart) (01/17/90)

Stopgap: written at Stanford AI Lab before 1971 or so
SOS (Son of Stopgap): written there in about 1972

at CMU:
BILOS (Brother-in-law of Stopgap): font (``character set'') editor for
the XGP, written about 1973; a bitmap editor
SILOS (Sister-in-law of Stopgap): font editor for the GDP vector
displays, also written about 1973; thus, a vector-graphics font editor.

All dates should be taken with grains of salt; I arrived at CMU in 1974
and all these things had already been created, and Lee Erman (and
others) had already brought SOS to CMU from SAIL.

thomas@mvac23.UUCP (Thomas Lapp) (01/17/90)

Why did they name it VAX?  Well, as my .sig says it: VAX stands for
Virtual Address eXtension.  I think it has to do with the fact that 
it is an address extension to the PDP series... or maybe that it can
handle virtual address space in addition to real?  I'm stabbing in the
dark here, though.
                         - tom
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Location: Newark, DE, USA                          
Quote   : Virtual Address eXtension.  Is that like a 9-digit zip code?

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jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) (01/17/90)

From article <153.UUL1.3#5131@mvac23.UUCP>,
by thomas@mvac23.UUCP (Thomas Lapp):
>
> Why did they name it VAX?  Well, as my .sig says it: VAX stands for
> Virtual Address eXtension.  I think it has to do with the fact that 
> it is an address extension to the PDP series...
>
It's not the PDP series, it's the PDP-11 series.  The PDP-11 was a 16
bit machine, the PDP-8 was an unrelated 8 bit machine, the PDP-10 was
an unrelated 36 bit machine, and the PDP-15 was an unrelated 18 bit
machine.  All were made by DEC, many used compatible hardware at some
level, but there was not one PDP series in any useful sense.

That aside, the PDP-11 went through many models.  The high-end line of
PDP-11's went as follows (in chronological order with parenthetic remarks
about siblings that play no part in this story):

    PDP-11/20  -- the ancestral machine (OEM'd as the 11/15?)
                    with no floating point, and no memory mapping.
                         (the 11/15 was the OEM version of the 11/20?)
    PDP-11/45  -- faster, with segmented memory address mapping
                    and a floating point unit that overlapped
                    floating point computation with scalar
                    computation.
                         (the 11/40 was the OEM version of the 11/45?)
                         (the 11/35 and 11/30 were introduced later?)
    PDP-11/70  -- as I understand it, this was basically a PDP-11/45
                    CPU with an expanded segmented memory mapping
                    architecture and something other than the UNIBUS
                    to connect the CPU and main memory.
                         (the 11/05 was at about the same time?)

Now for the folklore:

    PDP-11/78  -- a paper machine, intended to outperform the 11/70,
                    with improved support for 32 bit operands.

    PDP-11/78 VAX -- The 11/78 with an improved memory mapping system
                    allowing real demand paged virtual memory instead
                    of the interesting but ultimately crippling idea of
                    limiting each program to only a few segments of at
                    most 64K bytes each (Intel, take note).

    VAX-11/780  -- a new name for the PDP-11/78 project, coined when it
                    was realized that so many changes had been made to
                    the original PDP-11 architecture that the pretense
                    that the machine was upwards compatible was no longer
                    credible.

This is the story I heard in the 1970's, just after DEC lost its bid to
sell my group at Illinois an 11/45.  We got a MODCOMP IV, much more of a
real 32 bit machine than any of the PDP-11's, and as far as I know, this
story predates the delivery of the first VAX.

Would someone from DEC please post the definitive family tree of the PDP-11
family and hang the VAX from it correctly?

				Doug Jones
				jones@herky.cs.uiowa.edu

stevedc@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Stephen D Carter) (01/17/90)

From article <457@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>, by jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879):
> From article <153.UUL1.3#5131@mvac23.UUCP>,
> by thomas@mvac23.UUCP (Thomas Lapp):
>>
> It's not the PDP series, it's the PDP-11 series.  The PDP-11 was a 16
                                                               ***
> bit machine, the PDP-8 was an unrelated 8 bit machine, the PDP-10 was
 ,                       ***                                        ***
Eh?  What's all this 'WAS'.  I'm still using two for production work?


Stephen D Carter, Systems Manager, The Administration, 
The University of Sussex, Sussex House, Falmer, BRIGHTON, BN1 9RH.  UK
Tel: +44 273 678203 (Direct line). Tel: +44 273 606755 (Switchboard).
JANET : stevedc@uk.ac.sussex.syma   
ARPA  : stevedc%sussex.syma@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
USENET: stevedc@syma.sussex.ac.uk
UUCP  : ...!mcvax!ukc!syma!stevedc
BITNET: ukacrl!sussex.syma!stevedc or stevedc%sussex.syma@ukacrl

ercm20@castle.ed.ac.uk (Sam Wilson) (01/17/90)

[What does VAX stand for?  Someone answered 'Virtual Address eXtension.]

Virtual Address eXtension it is! The PDP 11/34 that I used to work on
had an 18-bit real memory address.  Some of the other 11s had 22-bit
real memory addresses.  The instruction set of all 11s has 16-bit
addresses, referred to in the memory manager dox as the virtual address. 
So the virtual address space was SMALLER than the real address space,
that's why, when they built the VAX as an upgrade to the 11, they
decided it needed an eXtension! :-)

Sam Wilson				Dislaimer: Wisnae me, Jum!
Edinburgh University

thomas@mvac23.UUCP (Thomas Lapp) (01/18/90)

jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879)
writes:
> Would someone from DEC please post the definitive family tree of the PDP-11
> family and hang the VAX from it correctly?

In industrial applications, there was also a PDP-11/xx series of computers
but they had a different name (PROCESS-11?), since it was more of a
process control machine.  Anyone know what that was/is?

                         - tom
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Quote   : Virtual Address eXtension.  Is that like a 9-digit zip code?

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toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) (01/19/90)

In article <457@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
>    VAX-11/780  -- a new name for the PDP-11/78 project, coined when it
>                    was realized that so many changes had been made to
>                    the original PDP-11 architecture that the pretense
>                    that the machine was upwards compatible was no longer
>                    credible.

But it was upward compatible -- the VAX had a PDP-11 emulation mode which
I made heavy use of. Also (and this is subject to dispute) the original 
VMS operating system ran in PDP-11 emulation mode. Well, maybe parts of it
did. At any rate, we used UNIX.

Tom Almy
toma@tekgvs.labs.tek.com
Standard Disclaimers Apply

henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (01/19/90)

In article <457@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
>                         (the 11/15 was the OEM version of the 11/20?)

Correct.

>                         (the 11/40 was the OEM version of the 11/45?)

Nope, quite unrelated.  (The 45's number has always been a bit of a
mystery.)  The 40 was a cheaper, slower, cut-down 45 -- the new "mid-range"
model to replace the 20 -- and originated the brain-dead low-end version
of the MMU.

>                         (the 11/35 and 11/30 were introduced later?)

The 35 was an OEM 40.  Never heard of a 30.

>    PDP-11/70  -- as I understand it, this was basically a PDP-11/45
>                    CPU with an expanded segmented memory mapping
>                    architecture and something other than the UNIBUS
>                    to connect the CPU and main memory.

There was a 45 hiding inside, but the MMU was new (faster as well as
wider), there was a cache, there was a wider memory bus, and there
were provisions for fast I/O devices going direct into memory without
going through the Unibus.  (These were often referred to as "Massbus"
devices, but technically the Massbus was DEC's odd controller-to-peripheral
bus rather than the controller-to-memory bus.)

>                         (the 11/05 was at about the same time?)

No, the 05 and the 45 were simultaneous -- 05 at low end, 45 at high end.

>    PDP-11/78  -- a paper machine, intended to outperform the 11/70,
>                    with improved support for 32 bit operands.

There were also several 11/7x models, never released, that were basically
multiprocessor 70s.
-- 
1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1990: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu

meissner@curley.osf.org (Michael Meissner) (01/19/90)

In article <1990Jan18.193530.22427@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <457@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
>>                         (the 11/15 was the OEM version of the 11/20?)
>
>Correct.
>
>>                         (the 11/40 was the OEM version of the 11/45?)
>
>Nope, quite unrelated.  (The 45's number has always been a bit of a
>mystery.)  The 40 was a cheaper, slower, cut-down 45 -- the new "mid-range"
>model to replace the 20 -- and originated the brain-dead low-end version
>of the MMU.

The '40 also had a completely different floating point unit.  I
remember well watching a V6 PDP-11/40 emulate the PDP-11/45 floating
point via SIGFPU (you could watch the console lights to tell when a
stat program was running).

I remember one summer writing standalone code that needed to run on an
LSI11-03, PDP-11/40, and a simulated PDP-11/70 running on a K?-10, and
the only way I could mask out interrupts between each of the different
PDP's was to push an address to jump to and the new interrupt mask on
the stack and do a return from interrupt instruction (yech!).

Michael Meissner	email: meissner@osf.org		phone: 617-621-8861
Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA

Catproof is an oxymoron, Childproof is nearly so

ctp@cs.utexas.edu (Clyde T. Poole) (01/19/90)

Just for the record, TECO stands for Tape Editor and COrrector as it
was originally desigened to be a character editor for paper tapes.

ctp
-----
Clyde T. Poole -- Technical Coordinator, Facilities and Equipment
Univ. of Texas at Austin        ARPA/CS/NSFnet: ctp@cs.utexas.edu
Dept. of Computer Sciences      UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!cs.utexas.edu!ctp
Taylor Hall 2.124               BITNET: ctp@UTADNX  SPAN: UTSPAN::UTADNX::CTP
Austin, TX  78712-1188          VOICE: (512) 471-9551   FAX: (512) 471-0548

ted@tahoe.unr.edu (Ted Sarbin) (01/19/90)

In article <457@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
>From article <153.UUL1.3#5131@mvac23.UUCP>,
>by thomas@mvac23.UUCP (Thomas Lapp):
>>
>> Why did they name it VAX?  Well, as my .sig says it: VAX stands for
>>
>It's not the PDP series, it's the PDP-11 series.  The PDP-11 was a 16
>bit machine, the PDP-8 was an unrelated 8 bit machine, the PDP-10 was
                                        ^^^
The PDP-8 (and its predecessor the PDP-5) were 12-bit machines!

>an unrelated 36 bit machine, and the PDP-15 was an unrelated 18 bit
>
>That aside, the PDP-11 went through many models.  The high-end line of
>PDP-11's went as follows (in chronological order with parenthetic remarks
>about siblings that play no part in this story):
>
>    PDP-11/20  -- the ancestral machine (OEM'd as the 11/15?)
>                    with no floating point, and no memory mapping.
Actually, the 11/20 had a memory mapping option called the KT11A.  It
was very complex, and made a basically slow machine much slower.  Almost
no one understood it and very few KT11As were sold.
>    PDP-11/45  -- faster, with segmented memory address mapping
>                    and a floating point unit that overlapped
>                    floating point computation with scalar
>                    computation.
>                         (the 11/40 was the OEM version of the 11/45?)
The PDP-11/40 was NOT an OEM version of the 11/45.  The OEM version of
the 11/45  was the 11/45.  The 11/40 was a microprogrammed, machine
which was slower than the 11/45 but much faster than the 11/20.  It had
a memory mapping system which was a subset of the 11/45's.  No second 
register set and no supervisor mode.  It had its own floating point
hardware.
>                         (the 11/35 and 11/30 were introduced later?)
The 11/35 was the OEM version of the 11/40
>    PDP-11/70  -- as I understand it, this was basically a PDP-11/45
>                    CPU with an expanded segmented memory mapping
>                    architecture and something other than the UNIBUS
>                    to connect the CPU and main memory.
It started out to be an 11/45 CPU but by the time the project was done there
were stustantial differences.  There was a cache betweent he CPU and the
high speed bus.  There was also a unibus mapping unit so that peripherals
which only knew about 18bit addresses could be used with the 22bit addresses
of the 11/70.  There also were four mass bus adapters which provided a
more efficient way for peripherals to access memory than over the unibus(tm).
>                         (the 11/05 was at about the same time?)
No, much earlier.  The 11/05 replaced the 11/20 for OEMs.
>
>Now for the folklore:
>
     PDP-11/10  -- announced at the same time as the PDP-11/20.  Was
                   an 11/20 like machine with 256 words of ram and
		   1k words of fusible link rom.  Fortunately, none were
		   ever sold. (There was later a low end end-user
		   machine based on the 11/05 called the 11/10.)

>
>				Doug Jones
>				jones@herky.cs.uiowa.edu

Inappropriate text to fool postnews so that this will be posted.
  ..
  ..
  ..
  ..
  ..
  ..

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Y VAX? [was : TECO on a DEC-System 10]
Summary: 
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References: <153.UUL1.3#5131@mvac23.UUCP> <457@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Sender: 
Reply-To: ted@tahoe.unr.edu (Ted Sarbin)     
Followup-To: 
Distribution: 
Organization: University of Nevada Reno
Keywords: 

In article <457@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
>From article <153.UUL1.3#5131@mvac23.UUCP>,
>by thomas@mvac23.UUCP (Thomas Lapp):
>>
>> Why did they name it VAX?  Well, as my .sig says it: VAX stands for
>>
>It's not the PDP series, it's the PDP-11 series.  The PDP-11 was a 16
>bit machine, the PDP-8 was an unrelated 8 bit machine, the PDP-10 was
                                        ^^^
The PDP-8 (and its predecessor the PDP-5) was a 12-bit machine!

>an unrelated 36 bit machine, and the PDP-15 was an unrelated 18 bit
>machine.  All were made by DEC, many used compatible hardware at some
>level, but there was not one PDP series in any useful sense.
>
>That aside, the PDP-11 went through many models.  The high-end line of
>PDP-11's went as follows (in chronological order with parenthetic remarks
>about siblings that play no part in this story):
>
>    PDP-11/20  -- the ancestral machine (OEM'd as the 11/15?)
>                    with no floating point, and no memory mapping.
Actually, the 11/20 had a memory mapping option called the KT11A.  It
was very complex, and made a basically slow machine much slower.  Almost
no one understood it and very few KT11As were sold.
>    PDP-11/45  -- faster, with segmented memory address mapping
>                    and a floating point unit that overlapped
>                    floating point computation with scalar
>                    computation.
>                         (the 11/40 was the OEM version of the 11/45?)
The PDP-11/40 was NOT an OEM version of the 11/45.  The OEM version of
the 11/45  was the 11/45.  The 11/40 was a microprogrammed machine
which was slower than the 11/45 but much faster than the 11/20.  It had
a memory mapping system which was a subset of the 11/45's.  No second 
register set and no supervisor mode.  It had its own floating point
instruction set which also turned up on the LSI-11.
>                         (the 11/35 and 11/30 were introduced later?)
The 11/35 was the OEM version of the 11/40.
>    PDP-11/70  -- as I understand it, this was basically a PDP-11/45
>                    CPU with an expanded segmented memory mapping
>                    architecture and something other than the UNIBUS
>                    to connect the CPU and main memory.
It started out to be an 11/45 CPU but by the time the project was done there
were stustantial differences.  There was a cache betweent he CPU and the
high speed bus.  There was also a unibus mapping unit so that peripherals
which only knew about 18bit addresses could be used with the 22bit addresses
of the 11/70.  There also were four mass bus adapters which provided a
more efficient way for peripherals to access memory than over the unibus(tm).
>                         (the 11/05 was at about the same time?)
No, much earlier.  The 11/05 replaced the 11/20 for OEMs.
>
>Now for the folklore:
>
     PDP-11/10  -- announced at the same time as the PDP-11/20.  Was
                   an 11/20 like machine with 256 words of ram and
		   1k words of fusible link rom.  Fortunately, none were
		   ever sold. (There was later a low-end end-user
		   machine based on the 11/05 called the 11/10.)

>
>				Doug Jones
>				jones@herky.cs.uiowa.edu

henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (01/20/90)

In article <3479@tahoe.unr.edu> ted@tahoe.unr.edu (Ted Sarbin) writes:
>The PDP-11/40 was NOT an OEM version of the 11/45.  The OEM version of
>the 11/45  was the 11/45.  The 11/40 was a microprogrammed, machine
>which was slower than the 11/45 ...

Basically correct but slightly misleading.  The 11/20 was the *only*
non-microprogrammed 11, and indeed its design compromises account for
some of the 11's oddities (e.g. INC and ADD #1 don't set condition codes
the same way).  The next generation -- 05 aka 10, 40, and 45 -- were all
microcoded.
-- 
1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1990: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu

gis@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Brian L. Stuart) (01/20/90)

In article <457@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:
> [stuff already amply followed up]
> Would someone from DEC please post the definitive family tree of the PDP-11
> family and hang the VAX from it correctly?

Well, I'm not affiliated with DEC so I can't call this definitive, but it
comes from C.G. Bell, et al's "Computer Engineering" so I consider it pretty
reliable.  By the way, you asked for it (well just the PDP-11 part) so
here goes....

Year  18-bitters     12-bitters         16-bitters                 36-bitters

1960    PDP-1 -------------------------------------------------------
          |                                                          \
1962    PDP-4 <--- LINC --------                                      \
1963      |        PDP-5   \    \                                      |
1964    PDP-7        |      \    \                                   PDP-6
1965      |        PDP-8 --\ |    \                                    |
1966      |        PDP-8/S LINC-8  |                                   |
1967      |          |       |     |                                 KA10
1968    PDP-9      PDP-8/I,L |     |                                   |
1969      |          |     PDP-12  |                                   |
1970    PDP-15       |           PDP-14  PDP-11(/20)                   |
1971      |        PDP-8/E                /   |  \                     |
1972    PDP-15/76  PDP-8/M        - PDP-11/05 | PDP-11/45 --         KI10
1973                 |           /   |    PDP-11/40  |      \          |
                     |          /    |         |     |       \         |
1975               PDP-8/A PDP-11/03 PDP-11/04 |     |    PDP-11/70  KL10
1976                 |            PDP-11/34    | PDP-11/55    |      KL20
1977               VT78              |    PDP-11/60           |
1978                              PDP-11/34C              VAX-11/780  

A few notes:
1)  The book was copyrighted 1978 so none of the later machines are mentioned,
    including 11/23, 11/24, 11/44, 11/73, 11/84 and later VAXen.
2)  It's not really completely accurate to hang the VAX off of the 11/70, but:
      "As the PDP-11/70 design progressed, it was realized that for some
      large applications there would soon be a bad mismatch between the
      64-Kbyte name space and the 4-Mbyte memory space."...
      "Thus, in 1974, architectural work began on extending the virtual
      address space of the PDP-11.  Several proposals were made."...
    [The PDP-11/72 and/or PDP-11/74 that others have mentioned may be
    among these.]
      "In April 1975, work on a 32-bit architecture was started on VAX-11,
      with the goal of building a machine which was culturally compatible
      with PDP-11.  The initial group, called VAXA, consisted of Gordon
      Bell, Peter Conklin, Dave Cutler, Bill Demmer, Tom Hastings, Richy
      Lary, Dave Rodgers, Stever Rothman, and Bill Strecker as the principle
      architect."
    [from Bell, et al., quoted without permission]
    While the VAX is always included in the PDP-11 family, I think that
    there are some good arguments for it being its own family, especially
    since they no longer include the PDP-11 compatibility mode.  What do
    you think?
3)  The PDP-11/03 is also known as the LSI-11 which was later updated to
    the LSI-11/2.  (Technically it uses the LSI-11 processor and the system
    is known as the PDP-11/03).
4)  It is interesting to note that the most successful family (the 11s)
    is the only family that wasn't really ancestrally related to any
    preceding family, but was done from scratch applying lessons learned
    from all others.  (The original LINC was designed at MIT and DECs
    LINCs were based on it.)
5)  The K?10 and KL20 processors were used in the DECSystem10 and DECSystem20
    models and were sometimes referred to as the PDP-10.  This is one
    area of DEC lore that I'm not real clear on.  Could someone help
    add the details here?
6)  The astute (and patient) reader will notice some missing machines:
    the PDP-2, PDP-3 and PDP-13.  The PDP-2 was a number reserved for
    as 24 bit machine that was never build or, as far as I know, designed.
    The PDP-3 was designed as a 36 bit machine, but DEC never built it.
    but: "In 1960 a customer (Scientific Engineering Institute, Waltham,
    Massachusetts) built a PDP-3.  It was later dismantled and given to
    M.I.T.; as of 1974, it was up and running in Oregon."  As for the
    PDP-13?  Triskaidekaphobia perhaps?  Does anyone else know the
    story on this one?

Ok, time for a little trivia (as if most of this weren't already).

Now, no good computer information would be complete unless it involved
16 machines.  So who remembers or knows about the PDP-16?  Hint: it
was fundamentally different from the PDPs 1-15.

Brian L. Stuart
Department of Computer Science
Purdue University

mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) (01/20/90)

In article <6551@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> gis@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Brian L. Stuart) writes:
>1964    PDP-6
>1967    KA10
>1972    KI10
>1975    KL10
>1976    KL20
There was no such thing as the KL20, see below.
Also:
 1978    KS10, a small machine of approximately KA10 performance.

DEC built four other 36-bit processors, but none ever saw customer
ship.  These were a machine I believe was called Unicorn (I know
nothing about it other than the name), the Dolphin (a high end machine
killed due to "VAX jealousy"), the KO10/Minnow (a desktop machine
killed due to "VAX jealousy"), and the KC10/Jupiter (killed due to
engineering incompetance which took the entire product line down with
it).

Xerox built at least two machines, called Maxc, for internal use.
These were similar to a KA10 with a BBN pager.

Foonly built a series of processors of approximately KS10 performance,
with the exception of the F-1 which was reportedly the fastest machine
of this architecture ever built.

Systems Concepts built a series of processors of approximately 3 times
KL10 performance.  Besides their speed, they also consumed less power
(about 750 watts) than any other machine of this architecture.

>5)  The K?10 and KL20 processors were used in the DECSystem10 and DECSystem20
>    models and were sometimes referred to as the PDP-10.  This is one
>    area of DEC lore that I'm not real clear on.  Could someone help
>    add the details here?

There was never such a thing as a KL20.  The machines often mistakenly
referred to (perhaps even in Gordon Bell's book) as KL20's were really
KL10's with different exterior packaging.  There were several models
of KL10's.  From the programmer's point of view, they all could be
grouped together into two pseudo-models.  "Model A" did not have
extended addressing (30 bit address space of which 23 bits were
implemented) while "Model B" did.  Only "Model B" could run versions
of TOPS-20 after 5.1, although DEC stopped supporting TOPS-20 for
"Model A" after 4.1.  From the user programmer's point of view, the
KS10 was identical to a "Model A" KL10.

The name PDP-10 refers to any CPU of the KA10/KI10/KL10/KS10 family;
it is sometimes also used to refer to the machines of other
manufacturers.

The name "DECsystem-10" refers to a system composed of a PDP-10 CPU, a
set of peripherals, and the TOPS-10 operating system.

The name "DECSYSTEM-20" refers to a system composed of a KL10 or KS10
model PDP-10 CPU, a set of peripherals, and the TOPS-20 operating
system.

The reason for the difference in case is that DEC was sued by Singer,
which at that time made a thing called a "system-10", for trademark
violation.  The settlement involved DEC promising not to use lower
case "system" any more.
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