DEC / Digital Equipment Corporation
DEC was a leader in midrange (minicomputer) and mainframe (DECsystem)
systems, as well as being strong in scientific and engineering
applications.
DEC was eventually bought by Compaq; later, Compaq was acquired/merged
into Hewlett Packard. (below is not an exhaustive list - there are racks
and racks of DEC equipment!)
PDP8 (introduced 1965), 12 bit CPU architecture - their "Straight
Eight" is under restoration:
The front view, instrument cluster - the
lights can be used for debugging as it lets you inspect the internal state
of the CPU. Above this are the "flip chip" cards that are inserted
into the wire-wrapped backplane.
DEC also made terminals - if you have ever logged into a Unix or Linux
based system via Telnet or SSH, you might have seen something about a
"TERM" setting - including a "vt100" terminal setting which your system
emulates. The actual terminal (DEC made thousands of them) is at the
LSSM:
- PDP11 (introduced 1970) - many models spanning many years, 16 bit
CPU architecture
- VAX - a big, powerful architecture that was DEC's "mainframe"
offering, with clustering of systems, etc. Later versions spanned from
technical desktop workstation (VAXstation 4000/90 pictured) to huge
multiprocessor systems
