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Questions tagged [dec]

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

9 votes
3 answers
1k views

CP/M and MS-DOS had several characteristics are derived from DEC operating systems, such as Control-Z EOF, the coloned device name (drive letter) prefix of file identifiers, 3-character filename ...
George Jonathan Williams's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
223 views

I am searching for information on the operation of the DEC RP04 disk drive. I found several manuals, such as the "RP04 moving head disk subsystem maintenance manual" and the "RP04 ...
JosF's user avatar
  • 423
3 votes
0 answers
267 views

What DEC PDP-11 document did these pages come from? Around 1978-1981 I photocopied a section of a DEC PDP-11 document. Now I'm trying to figure out what document that was. The system we had then was a ...
aMike's user avatar
  • 281
1 vote
2 answers
441 views

I'm reading some older FOCAL documents and see references to things like... SETS X TO THE DECIMAL ASCII CODE OF THE INPUT CHARACTER A bit later there is a table of these codes, and unless I am not ...
Maury Markowitz's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
103 views

I was sure I had a copy of Diamont's Sumer in FOCAL, but now I can't find a trace of it on my machines or online. Does anyone have a copy of the original code?
Maury Markowitz's user avatar
21 votes
2 answers
2k views

Back in the early 1980s I worked at a bank. My department input data into a mini-computer which was then to a mainframe system each day. I'm pretty sure it was a DEC mini, if only because the ...
TheMadturk's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
350 views

While the majority of DEC's PDP-11 systems used UNIBUS or QBUS based peripherals for storage, some of the larger PDP-11s, along with larger machines such as the DECsystem 20 and the VAX-11/780 used ...
Xav101's user avatar
  • 51
12 votes
2 answers
2k views

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
  • 65.3k
8 votes
1 answer
243 views

I'm putting together an article on TPC-C, and while chasing down leads its primary author mentioned the RdbStar project at DEC. As he described it, the manager of DEC's storage department (Jim Grey? ...
Maury Markowitz's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
1k views

The DEC Type 30 was an early vector graphics display, that was used for an astonishingly wide range of applications for the 1960s. It used a 16-inch circular CRT with high persistence phosphor ...
rwallace's user avatar
  • 65.3k
5 votes
2 answers
796 views

Reading over some old articles on Alpha I realized I really didn't understand PALcode. So I did a little reading on that. PALcode is stored in main memory, is written in Alpha ML, and is called by a ...
Maury Markowitz's user avatar
15 votes
2 answers
3k views

The PDP-8 was a remarkable exercise in minimalist computer design; some of the aspects of its design are discussed in detail at PDP-8 transistor count One feature it did not have was a stack. Instead, ...
rwallace's user avatar
  • 65.3k
5 votes
3 answers
773 views

In the assembly language used in Unix on DEC machines (PDP-11, VAX), one can use numerical labels and refer to them with suffixes "b" and "f" meaning "backwards" and &...
Leo B.'s user avatar
  • 22.3k
7 votes
2 answers
454 views

The escape sequences ESC # 3 and ESC # 4 (DECDHL) are meant to be used on pairs on adjacent lines to request double height lines. As an example: echo -e "\e#3DOUBLE HEIGHT LINE\n\e#4DOUBLE HEIGHT ...
ninjalj's user avatar
  • 755
3 votes
1 answer
294 views

I am looking for impressions, memoirs, articles, guidelines - everything that is possible about the unusual direction of software migration. I am interested in non-Unix related code, and preferably ...
Wheelmagister's user avatar

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