On this date in 1964, Business Week published an announcement of Digital Equipment
Corporation's first mainframe computer, the PDP-6, a behemoth featuring up to
262,144 36-bit words of core memory.

--
Rich Alderson news@alderson.users.panix.com
Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen

If anyone has a copy of this article, I'd love to see it. I found it
references in Business Week's 1964 index, but not the article itself.

According to Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org>:
>If anyone has a copy of this article, I'd love to see it. I found it
>references in Business Week's 1964 index, but not the article itself.

Here's the physical magazine on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/303379761833

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

>>If anyone has a copy of this article, I'd love to see it. I found it
>>references in Business Week's 1964 index, but not the article itself.
> Here's the physical magazine on ebay:

Someone sent me a very nice copy. Going by that, I found two that don't
look as good, but should be ok.

https://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/Digital/A_Computer_that_grows_BusWeek_640314.pdf
https://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/CGB%20Files/A%20Computer%20That%20Grows%20With%20You%20Product%20Article%20640314%20c.pdf

Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> writes:
>>>If anyone has a copy of this article, I'd love to see it. I found it
>>>references in Business Week's 1964 index, but not the article itself.
>> Here's the physical magazine on ebay:
>
>Someone sent me a very nice copy. Going by that, I found two that don't
>look as good, but should be ok.
>
>https://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/Digital/A_Computer_that_grows_BusWeek_640314.pdf
>https://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/CGB%20Files/A%20Computer%20That%20Grows%20With%20You%20Product%20Article%20640314%20c.pdf

A maxed out PDP-6 would have cost USD20,000,000 today (at USD2,000,000 in 1964).

That's an expensive box.

According to Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net>:
>>https://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/CGB%20Files/A%20Computer%20That%20Grows%20With%20You%20Product%20Article%20640314%20c.pdf
>
>A maxed out PDP-6 would have cost USD20,000,000 today (at USD2,000,000 in 1964).
>
>That's an expensive box.

Computers used to be really expensive. A PDP-1 was very cheap by 1960
standards, but its price is like $1.2 million today.

On the other hand, did anyone ever buy a maxed out PDP-6? THe one I
used, at Applied Logic in Princeton, had as I recall one moderate sized
disk, two or three tape drives, and a funky terminal multiplexor, a
PDP-8 based 680 running out of the high end of the 6's memory. I think
it did have 256K, and every PDP-6 had the "optional" fast registers.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

John Levine writes:
> I think [the Applied Logic PDP-6] did have 256K

Any time frame on that? The stories usually go that when Marvin Minsky
ordered a 256K memory in 1966 it was an almost unthinkable amount of
memory. Of course, a few years later it would have been different.

Budne's info from https://www.ultimate.com/phil/pdp10/pdp6-serials.html
is that it "became operational in January 1966", and "1967
configuration: 32KW".

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> writes:
>According to Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net>:
>>>https://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/CGB%20Files/A%20Computer%20That%20Grows%20With%20You%20Product%20Article%20640314%20c.pdf
>>
>>A maxed out PDP-6 would have cost USD20,000,000 today (at USD2,000,000 in 1964).
>>
>>That's an expensive box.
>
>Computers used to be really expensive. A PDP-1 was very cheap by 1960
>standards, but its price is like $1.2 million today.

Yes, I'm aware. Our burroughs V530 sold for a couple million,
in the mid-80's, and even the low end machines were in the 500k
to 750k range sans peripherals.

I don't know what the B3500 cost in 1966, but it surely was in
same ballpark as the PDP-6.