PDP-7
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The DEC PDP-7 is a minicomputer produced by Digital Equipment Corporation. Introduced in 1965, the first to use their Flip Chip® technology, with a cost of only $72,000 USD, it was cheap but powerful. The PDP-7 was the third of Digital's 18-bit machines, with essentially the same instruction set architecture as the PDP-4 and the PDP-9.
In 1969, Ken Thompson wrote the first UNIX system in assembly language on a PDP-7, then named Unics as a somewhat treacherous pun on Multics, as the operating system for Space Travel (http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/spacetravel.html), a game which required graphics to depict the motion of the planets.
There are a few remaining PDP-7 still in operable condition, and an interesting restoration project in Oslo, Norway.
External link
- http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch02s01.html The role of the PDP-7 in the creation Unix is explored in The Art of Unix Programming ("Origins and History of Unix, 1969-1995")
- http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/pdp7.html "The famous PDP-7 comes to the rescue" (Bell Labs' Unix history)
- http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/timeline/1964-3.htm PDP-7 entry from Year 1964 in the DIGITAL Computing Timeline
- http://tore.nortia.no/ PDP-7 restoration project located in Oslo, Norway (down for maintenance)de:PDP-7