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PDP-10 Dead

PDP-10
KindMachine
Introduced1966
Discontinued1983
StatusDead
ManufacturerDigital Equipment Corporation
ClassMainframe
Platform36-bit
Sourcebitsavers.org ↗

The hacker machine — ITS at MIT, TENEX at BBN, TOPS-20 in commerce; home of the first ARPANET mail, MacLisp, EMACS, and Zork. Killed by DEC in 1983 to protect the VAX.

Created by Digital Equipment Corporation
Hosted ITS TENEX TOPS-20

Alan Kotok and Gordon Bell's 36-bit mainframe (1966) — the KA10 through KL20 — ran three famous OSes: BBN's TENEX (first virtual memory in commerce), MIT's free ITS (the hacker OS), and DEC's own TOPS-20.

The first ARPANET host-to-host message was sent to a PDP-10; MacLisp, EMACS, Adventure, and Zork were written on it. DEC killed the line in 1983 to protect the VAX — the cancellation notice is itself a document of hacker grief.

Sources

  1. bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp10/
  2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-10