Possibly the single most successful minicomputer design in history, a
favorite of hackers for many years, and the first major Unix machine,
The first PDP-11s (the 11/15 and 11/20) shipped in 1970 from {DEC};
the last (11/93 and 11/94) in 1990. Along the way, the 11 gave birth
to the {VAX}, strongly influenced the design of microprocessors such
as the Motorola 6800 and Intel 386, and left a permanent imprint on
the C language (which has an odd preference for octal embedded in its
syntax because of the way PDP-11 machine instructions were
formatted). There is a history site.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {BSD}{DEC}{grind}{little-endian}{magic number}{milliLampson}{NMI}{orthogonal}{PDP-10}{PDP-20}{retrocomputing}{scratch monkey}{SEX}{shim}{silo}{swab}{TECO}{troff}{VAX}{vaxocentrism}{WOMBAT}]