GBell's CyberMuseum
for Digital Equipment Corp (DEC):
Documents, Photo Albums, Talks, and Videotapes about Computing History
Historical
Overview
- Digital 41 Year History CD published 30
April, 1998 with key events and timeline... with photos and facts about
machines (alpha to PDP-1), modules e.g. the K-series, the mill, and
people! A great reference document...complete with
quizzes.
- Family Tree
of Digital's Computers Poster created by Gordon Bell in 1980 showing the
evolution of all of all computer models and times they were introduced since
1960.
- Digital 1957 to Present, a Digital Equipment Corporation
publication, last edition 1978 @13MB PDF.
- Digital At Work, snapshots from the first thirty-five years,
Digital Press 1992 @24.1MB PDF.
Digital
Equipment Corporation Machine Manuals
- Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1
Manual, 1960 (original version) @2MB PDF.
- Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1
Manual, 1961 @5.5MB PDF
- Digital Equipment Corporation F-25 PDP-1 Manual
for I/O @8.3 MB PDF, authored by Gordon Bell, describing the various ways
I/O devices could be connected to PDP-1. It included interrupts we called
sequence break, coming from MIT's Lincoln Laboratory; high speed memory that
evolved to be called direct memory access or DMA.
- Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-4
Manual, 1962 @3.8MB PDF.
- Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-5
Manual, 1964 @7.2MB PDF.
- Digital Equipment Corporation
PDP-11 Manual, 1969, with ISP description of the architecture @5.9MB PDF
- PDP-6 Reference
Manual and Logic Diagrams (ps) is on Tom Knight's PDP-6 web site at the
MIT AI Lab.
The site also includes photos
and explanations of the original DEC modules.
- Digital Equipment Corporation RT-11 Introduction Manual, 1977
@13.5MB PDF.
- Digital Equipment Corporation RT-11 System User's
Guide, 1977 @23.3MB PDF.
- Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel, and Xerox Ethernet Specifications Manual, 1980
@5MB PDF.
Papers and Memos
- VAX Strategy 15 page (PDF 0.5 MB)
document, written in October 1978 by Gordon Bell, and updated in January
1979.
Articles and Product
Announcements
- A Computer That Grows
With You. Business Week article (PDF 0.5 MB), March 1964, on the
introduction of PDP-6 with photo of Gordon Bell and Dick Best.
- Using a PDP-1
Computer as a Pulse Height Analyzer. A paper by John Leng and
Gordon Bell and others while John worked for the Atomic Energy of Canada. Note that
this "first" was a prototype for Digital's subsequent entry into the
Laboratory Market!
- Ethernet Announcement
Presentation. This Ethernet announcement with slides and talk text
was made in 1982 by Gordon Bell. Bob Noyce of Intel, and Dave Liddle of
Xerox presented at the same meeting..
Note Gordon's presentation states: "the network
becomes the system"... "you may recall a similar
mantra that SUN Microsystems later appropriated".--gbell
- Retrospective
on the PDP-11 Paper (unpublished) written by me in 1995 to be published
with the original PDP-11 paper.
- Retrospective
on the PDP-11 written by Bill Strecker with a retrospective about VAX
and Alpha and published in 1995.
- What
we learned from the PDP-11, published by myself and Bill Strecker in
1975.
PowerPoint Albums and
Talks of Computing History
Netshow Videos and
Videotapes
- On the Future of Computers. Netshow Video @28.8 Kbps.
This 1972 videotaped lecture was given at M.I.T. and describes a model for
future computers, including computer classes and the prediction of new
types of computers.
Biographical Material
including Interviews, etc.
Books
The following books were encoded
at Carnegie-Mellon University and hosted at their Universal Library http://www.ulib.org/
. The site for the books is: http://www.ulib.org/webRoot/Books/Saving_Bell_Books/
- Bell, Grason, Newell, DESIGNING
COMPUTERS AND DIGITAL SYSTEMS USING PDP-16 REGISTER TRANSFER MODULES,
Digital Press, September 1972. At this site.
- Bell, C. G., C. Mudge, J. McNamara, COMPUTER
ENGINEERING, Digital Press 1978. At this site.
Other books to
come...
