Minicomputer
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A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers. Mi
Six different minicomputers (out of many more models) produced by the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) with the year of introduction in brackets: First row: PDP-1 (1959), PDP-7 (1964), PDP-8 (1965); second row: PDP-8/E (1970), PDP-11/70 (1975), PDP-15 (1970).
Data General Nova, serial number 1, on display at the Computer History Museum
Raytheon RDS 500 seismic processing system in Benghazi in 1978
Varian Data Machines system connected to analogue tape playback system in 1984
PDP-11
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The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers originally sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the late 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor series. In tota
Minicomputer
…16-bit systems, with the late-1969 Data General Nova being a notable entry in this space. By the early 1970s, most minis were 16-bit, including DEC's PDP-11. For a time, "minicomputer" was almost synonymous with "16-bit", as the larger mainframe machines almost always used 32-bit or larger word sizes. In a…
A PDP-11/40 CPU is at the bottom, with a TU56 dual DECtape drive installed above it.
This PDP-11/70 system included two nine-track tape drives, two disk drives, a high speed line printer, a DECwriter dot-matrix keyboard printing terminal and a cathode ray tube terminal, all installed in a climate-controlled machine room.
PDP-11/03 (top right)
Q-Bus board with LSI-11/2 CPU