🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <34...@tahoe.unr.edu> ma...@tahoe.unr.edu (Vampire In The Sun) writes:

[Some stuff about DECmate I, II and III deleted]

>Not a bad system to use, considering that DEC had more or less cobbled
>it together as a quick first entry into the word processor market (although
>I think there was an even older version, using a VT52 and a slightly
>different disk format, and (I think) called something else), and I think
>the price was pretty reasonable for the time.

It was called VT78. I don't exactly know why, but I guess the
VT is for the VT52, and the 8 in 78 is for the CMOS pdp8.

>I always wondered what method had been used by DEC to optimize the
>handling of all those 8-bit characters using a 12-bit machine, or if
>in fact any optimization had been implemented at all.  Does anyone know
>how this was handled?

I don't know about the wordprocessing software, but OS/8, the
"general" operating system used a scheme like this.
The first character was stored in the first word. The second
character was stored in the second word, and the four
high bits of the third character was stored in the first
word's high bits, while the four low bits was stored in
the second words high bits. If you didn't want to bother,
you just cleared the high bits in both words, and you
had two characters/word, but all character oriented device
drivers supported the three chars per two words packing.
I would guess the same applied to the wordprocessing
software.

Some might not consider this to be folklore, I don't
know. However, it is a thing from the past though...

To make the picture complete, DEC also released
something called DECstation 78 and DECstation 88.
The DECstation 78 was a repacking of the VT78,
and the DECstation 88 was a pdp8/a with different
configurations.

While I'm at it, I'll shoot some at those anti-pdp8
fans as well. The pdp8 could handle 32kW (12bit),
except for the pdp8/a (the last model), which could
handle 128kW. (So much for those "Max 12kW" speakers... :-)

Since we're on the pdp8, I'll make a short "commercial"
about the pdp8-lovers mailing list. Request should
be sent to pdp8-love...@mc.lcs.mit.edu
and all kind of old DEC equipment is mumbled about, not
just the pdp-8, though it is the most common machine...

> Then again, maybe it's the stupid IBM PC, whose standard
>printer device is (or was) too dumb to know about XON/XOFF...

Got to be that stupid PC, since DEC once upon a time
only did good stuff... :-)

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Everybody know that the DECstation is a pdp8, which is a RISC,
but where did MIPS computers get into it?

	- Johnny Billquist
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