Questions tagged [dec]

For questions regarding the hardware, software and peripheral products of DEC - The Digital Equipment Corporation.

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91 votes
10 answers
32k views

How much better was DEC Alpha than contemporaneous x86?

The DEC Alpha, released in 1992, seems like an early implementation of a fully 64-bit microprocessor architecture. Its release led to quite a bit of both marketing hype and genuine vendor support in ...
Brian H's user avatar
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46 votes
6 answers
14k views

How should we interpret Dave Cutler's criticism of Unix?

Dave Cutler is well known for his contributions to operating systems, having led the effort on VAX VMS at DEC and Windows NT at Microsoft. According to his Wikipedia page, he is also known for ...
Brian H's user avatar
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23 votes
5 answers
1k views

Where can I find software for the PDP-6?

We are planning to build a reconstruction of the PDP-6. The project is making a lot of progress, but currently we have a critical lack of software. Does anybody know where we can find software to run ...
fuz's user avatar
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23 votes
5 answers
3k views

Were there any LSI-11 like home computers outside of Russia?

In my childhood I had one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronika_BK Note, that the CPU of this is based on LSI-11. This is rather surprising because PDP-11 took a room (I was lucky ...
Andrew Savinykh's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
710 views

Why were TECO variables called Q-registers?

The TECO editor, (originally Tape Editor and COrrector, later Text Editor...) found in some form on just about every computer and operating system DEC ever made, provides variables in which you can ...
another-dave's user avatar
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15 votes
3 answers
1k views

Conditional skip instructions of the PDP-8

I am interested in the SKIP instructions on the PDP-8. These test the accumulator and Link bit, and they skip the next instruction if the condition holds. The instructions are: OR GROUP SMA - Skip ...
Lorraine's user avatar
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10 votes
2 answers
791 views

What did Richard Stallman have against VMS?

Richard Stallman of course was an advocate of free software, and VMS was proprietary, so he would've disapproved of it on that basis alone. (To be clear, I am not discussing here whether he was right ...
rwallace's user avatar
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