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(1970) The 11/20 is the first PDP-11 that came to the market in April 1970. This model looks much like the older PDPs (PDP-15, PDP-12, PDP-6 and PDP-8) with fragile keys and a flat frontpanel.
Quite peculiar is the fact that this machine has a hardwired machinecycle and lacks a microprogram. We have one complete machine and an incomplete one for spare, but the project to bring it back alive has not been started yet.
The PDP 11s feature a very modular nature of design: it has a very clean instruction set and it has no special instructions for I/O. PDP 11s have been very popular due to the clean design and the fact that technical details were published and people could design their own hardware when needed.
(1972) The PDP 11/10 or 11/05 (OEM version) is a very well known machine in the process control and data acquisition world. It's a small machine with the CPU implemented on two boards. Maximum memory size is 56 KB. We have several 11/10s: one of which is installed in old fashioned low cabinets. This machine has PC-11 punched papertape unit and can be booted from papertape.
The PTS Paper Tape Software (Copyrighted 1971) is fully Y2K compliant as there is simply no date entered at all. PTS consists of texteditor, assembler (pal-11), debugging tool, link editor, base I/O package. Besides PTS we have a standalone Basic for this machine.
In the mean time we have installed a working RK05 drive and are able to run the RT-11 operating system. It's realy clever how this systems works on only 32 KB or RAM. We can now run demos and little games from harddisk.
(1972) The 11/40 or 11/35 (OEM version) is a very well known PDP 11: as a successor for the 11/20 it was faster. The CPU consisted of 6 boards and uses a microprogram. Memory management (16 to 18 bit addressing: 248KB max) is an option, as is Floating Point and Extended Instruction Set.
We are currently repairing our 11/40. Processor and 64KB of core memory are running. The configuration contains a Kennedy 9300 tape drive and an RL-02 10MB disk drive.
(1975) This system is the eyecatcher of the collection. The 11/55 differs from the well known 11/45 by its bipolar memory. By using this high speed memory for parts of the operating system one could achieve improved performance. Since the bipolar memory was partly defective and it consumed lots of energy (over 900 Watt) we removed it from the machine. The 11/55 has a memory management unit for separated instruction and data space, which allows programs to be as large as 64KB data and 64KB instructions.
We haven't finished the machine yet: there is 32KB of core available and working right now, but we want to install 256KB MOS when finished testing. The RK05 and RK07 are not yet cleaned and tested. The machine contains a double TU-56 DECtape, a double RX-01 flexette (8" floppy disks), a double TU-60 DECassette and a Kennedy 9100 tape-unit (800 BPI and 1600 BPI 9 track 1/2" tape).
(1979) The PDP 11/44 (hostname "gigant") is a low-cost successor of the PDP 11/70. The 11/70, brought to the market in 1975, was the first "large" PDP. Large means a 22 bit addres space and a memory limit of 4MB. Do keep in mind that user programs are still limited to 16 bit addressing and hence restricted to a limit of just 2x 64KB, when using separated I&D.
The cost of a new 11/44 has been about half of the listprice of an 11/70. The PDP 11/44 had no Massbus like the /70 has, so it was not possible to use diskdrives with a transferrate too high.
Our PDP 11/44 has 2x RL02 (10MB cardridge), RL01 (5MB), 2x RX02 (512KB floppy), 2x RK07 (27MB) and a Cypher tapeunit. The picture shows a third RK-07 at the rightside, which is a spare unit.
Years later machines such as the PDP 11/44 were replaced by the PDP 11/73: much smaller and cheaper. Our PDP 11/73 (hostname "kubus") has about the capacity and storage of the 11/44.
The 11/73 housed in a BA-123 has 2MB of memory and two RD53 (70MB) disks.
The VAX 11/750 is a real 32 bit machine from the beginning of the 80s. The machine has 12MB memory and two Fujitsu Eagles (400MB each) and a RA-81 disk (450MB). The TU 81-PLUS tapeunit is not yet installed. The system has been tested, but is waiting for software to be installed.
The VAX 11/750 is the second model in the VAX range. Using VLSI techniques, this machines takes less power. Compared to the first VAX, the 11/780, the /750 deliveres about 70% of the computing power.
The DECstation 3100 (hostname "retired") has a MIPS R2000 processor, 16MB memory, 900MB disks and a 90MB TK50 tapeunit.
This type of machine looks like the VAXstation 3100 series, which could both run VAX/VMS and Ultrix. DECstations could only run Ultrix as the have a different processor. This DECstation now runs NetBSD, a public domain Unix implementation.
The Eclipse is a 16 bits machine with 18 bits addresses. This machine features a multi-user operating system AOS/VS, Advanced Operating System/Virtual Storage.
The systemdisk is 20MB and the machine has a 1/2" tape-unit for small reels. The machine needs cleaning.
The Eclipse and its software are intended for application in an office environment. It supports Cobol, Basic and a WordPerfect 4 wordprocessor.
The HP1000 is 16 bits machine. This system has a fixed and a removable disk.
The HP1000 is a very well known computer in the world of real-time systems. This one has been used for climate control in agricultural research.
Unfortunately the machine is not complete: some boards are missing as are parts of the disk drive. In the mean time we collected a spare diskdrive and a complete set of boards. It's a project to be done to rebuilt the HP1000 and getting it alive again.
The Olivetti LSX3030 (hostname "triple") is a Multi-processor system uses a special Olivetti Unix V.
Currently two processors and three disks are employed. There still is a problem with the tapeunit, but when that has been solved the third CPU can be installed and tested.
Systems like this one have been used by a large Dutch bank at their
local offices around the country.
Among many tasks they communicated with the central office.
The SUN 2/120 (hostname "joekel") is a SUN workstation from 1982. The SUN-2 features a Motorola 68010 processor and uses a Multibus. This one has 4MB of memory installed and a 400MB Fujitsu M2351 Eagle disk.
I have used this system running SunOS 3.5 as my E-mail server. We now plan to bring this system to a more original state by replacing the Eagle with a SUN cabinet containing two Fujitsu M2322K 134MB drives.
The SUN-2 can be used diskless when booted from a server. In 1982 the Network
File System (NFS) was a new invention by Sun. For the root and swap partition
of a diskless SUN-2 one used another protocol Network Disk (ND) that featured
raw disk-access over a network.
The SUN 3/60 (hostname "xsun") is a diskless station that boots from a larger server over the network. The SUN-3 has a Motorola MC 68020 cpu and a VME bus. This one runs the "Xkernel" using 8MB memory. It is used as a workstation to browse the local web-server.
The SUN 4/280 (hostname "kanjer") is a "sun4": the first architecture by SUN based on the SPARC technology, but not yet named after this architecture. Until january 1999 this machine has been used as an E-mail server.
The SUN 4/370 cabinets (see picture) hold among others the disks: Fujitsu M2344 (550MB) and M2371 (650 MB).
ComputerVision had a license to build SUNs. This workstation is in fact a SUN 3/110 with a MC 68020 processor, 4MB memory and a color videocard. This workstation needs booting over a network from a larger server.
ComputerVision is well known in the market for CAD/CAM workstations.
The Gould Powernode is a 32 bit machine. This system (hostname "kolos") has 8MB of memory, two Fujitsu M2333K disks 340MB each and a 1/2" 1600 BPI tapeunit. The machine runs UTX-32, an adaption of BSD 4.3 Unix with NFS from SUN. Gould cooperated with SUN in order to sell SUNs as engeneering workstations connected to GOULD machines. So, UTX-32 features all you need to boot SUN-3s.
The PowerNode 6040D uses a lot of power, however it's quite good in I/O and it reads a full 40MB tape in about 5 minutes, compared to over an hour by the 11/44.