The minicomputer returns to a Web site near you

In their day, the Digital Equipment Corp. PDP series of minicomputers ruled the world. Now they have found another purpose: as toys for ex-Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen.

Allen so loves the PDP series--which made its debut in the 1960s--he has set up a Web site to complement his own personal and historic collection of systems.

It's important that antiquated electronics equipment be preserved for the future, according to Allen. Advances in the IT field "arrive in such swift succession," he writes in a foreword to the site, "that even the software and hardware of a few seasons ago are considered obsolete.

"The decades-old computers and software in this collection, therefore, are truly worthy of our preservation and study--both for the cutting-edge innovations of their day as well as for their historical significance."

PDPs, short for Programmed Data Processors, certainly represented the cutting edge of innovation in their time. The PDP-1 first saw the light of day in 1960. Designed by DEC founder Ken Olsen and Harlan Andersen, it was the world's first minicomputer--which meant it was smaller than the average room.

By the time Allen and Bill Gates used a DEC system to build Microsoft's first product, a Basic compiler, the PDP line had reached No. 11, with the faster, better VAX waiting in the wings to replace it.

People who worked with PDP systems are still inclined to get misty-eyed about them. They were the IT industry's workhorses, featuring everything from embedded systems in defense computers to air-conditioning systems, in telephone exchanges and, above all, in scientific research of every type, from tracking human genes to trying to find cures for cancer.

DEC is long gone, having been taken over by Compaq, which was taken over by Hewlett-Packard. But the name lives on in the memories of the surprisingly large numbers of people currently working in the IT business who claim that they cut their technological teeth on a PDP.

Colin Barker of ZDNet UK reported from London.

[Len Bullard]

He is Securing the Future

Allen is also protecting history to secure the future. In these days in which the computer industry has become the music industry in spririt, acts and dodges, the protection of a true history protects the intellectual property investments that otherwise disappear in the avalanche of Monday-morning quarterbacking, funded punditry, and egocentric denials of the reality of ideas built on ideas built on insights that preced the building of reputations as heros to sell products.

Paul is doing the industry a favor by protecting the past to secure the future. Thanks!

[leflyman]

Edit much? Check the second paragraph

Try removing the left-over "short for" in the first sentence of the
second paragraph. Opps. Also in paragraph six, "Basic" should be
capitalized as "BASIC" as it is an abbreviation for the language,
"Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code." See: http://
inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbasic.htm

[williamjolitz]

PDP 11 was a doorway to the future in the 70's

Of the 20 or so computers I heavily used of the 70's, the PDP-11 and PDP-10 stand out in my mind as pivotal influence. PDP-10 systems on the ArpaNet were the focus of community and overall software enhancement. But the PDP-11 and UNIX for me was the beginning steps to not only today, but the next half century as well. To this day I can still remember the octal instruction codes from my college days at Cal doing 2.8BSD on the Stanley Hall PDP-11/40. Recently Stanley was being torn down, and an odd coincedence placed me with a group where we could see the tiny computer room in cutaway view as the building was bisected as if by a huge knife. It all came back with the RK05 "pizza platter" discs, 28KW core memory, 9 track tape, and a 16KW kernel program of 20K lines. Many a night tracing panics on the front panel with lights and switches.

[208774626618253979477959487856]

go PDP!

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