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For questions regarding the DEC PDP-8 minicomputer.

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Was the MC6800 a PDP-11 or PDP-8?

According to Gordon Bell, the 6800 was based on the PDP-11. According to Chuck Peddle, it was a PDP-8. Can anyone with knowledge of the PDP's pass judgement?
3
votes
0answers
82 views

What happens on the Straight-8 when changing to a non-existant data field?

The extended memory controller on the PDP-8 (the original one, sometimes called the Straight-8) apparently had difficulty when selecting a datafield that didn't exist: On machines with 8K or more, ...
1
vote
3answers
220 views

Was 1.10 a valid line number in FOCAL?

I'm looking over examples of FOCAL code, and I see that group numbers in the examples start with a 0 if need be. That is, it's 01.10, not 1.10. Was a leading zero optional?
5
votes
3answers
337 views

In what way does the Straight-8 expand on the PDP-5?

A quote from the Wikipedia: The PDP-5's instruction set was later expanded in its successor, the PDP-8, to handle more bit rotations and to increase the maximum memory size from 4K words to 32K ...
8
votes
1answer
226 views

Are there any PDP-8 assemblers that create linkable object files?

I am currently writing a compiler for the PDP-8. The compiler is going to translate source code into PDP-8 assembly code that calls some runtime routines to perform high-level functions such as ...
4
votes
2answers
234 views

Does the Intersil 6100 do interrupts differently from other PDP-8s?

As I recall, the original PDP-8 actually does a jsr 0000 when an interrupt happens, so that the interrupt service routine started at address 0001. I think that saves a few gates, since the instruction ...
19
votes
5answers
2k views

Size of the PDP-8

What is the physical size of a PDP-8? The photographs I found seem to be evenly divided between showing it as a compact unit that looks maybe one foot high, and as a tall cabinet maybe five or six ...
11
votes
4answers
2k views

PDP-8 transistor count

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count provides some transistor count figures for early microprocessors, e.g. 8008 and 6502 both listed at around 3500. The PDP-8 was a 12-bit computer with a ...
10
votes
3answers
1k views

How did the PDP-8 handle strings?

The PDP-8 was a popular 12-bit minicomputer of the late sixties. It used word addressing, so that it always dealt in 12-bit words, of which it could address 4096 with a full bank of core memory. In ...
7
votes
3answers
612 views

Arithmetic operations on multiple words on the PDP-8

For the PDP-8 with its strange ISA, I've always wondered what the "standard" (i.e. fastest) way to do arithmetic operations (add, subtract, maybe multiply) on integers consisting of multiple words was....
15
votes
3answers
821 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 ...
23
votes
4answers
3k views

Use of undocumented opcodes

I figure this is fitting for Retrocomputing.SE because CPUs like the 6502 and Z80 and the PDP-8, and probably others, have undocumented instructions and will happily execute them, in contrast with ...