[rescue] FA: PDP11 Qbus cards CPU and Memory

[Brian Hechinger]

On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 02:15:29PM -0800, Fogg, James wrote:
> Momma told me to never stick my hand into a dogfight, but here goes...

tsk, tsk, you should always listen to your momma!

> !!!DISCLAIMER!!! I am NOT a DECspert, I don't even play one on TV.

well, i'm a far cry from being an expert, but i've got quite a bit of knowledge
about them, so let me help you out here.

> This page http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?PDP-11 does make it
> sound like there was a LSI-11 model.

see below. [1]

> This page might (need character sets to see fully)
> http://openvms.compaq.co.jp/history/digital/40th/pdph.html

god damn compaq, why can't they have these pages on the us server as well in
enlish?  i don't know how many times i found what i want, only to have it be
useless cause i can't speak or read Japanese!

> And these.. http://www.parse.com/~pdp8/spares.html
> http://www.iana.org/assignments/machine-names 

this one timed out, so i don't know what it has to say.

> And yet this listing of DEC models doesn't
> http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/pdp-11/models.html
> 
> And here's a photo of what appears to be a DEC OEM product called the LSI-11
> http://simh.trailing-edge.com/photos/lsi11.jpg

[1] see here.

ok, take a close look at the picture on trailing-edge and the picture on the JP
compaq site.  notice that the LSI-11 is just some cards in a backplane.  THAT
is an LSI-11 system.  the second you put it in a case and hang some drives and
a console off of it, it instantly turns into a PDP-11.

that is what dave a greg are battling over.

> If one is mostly familiar with DEC products from Internet archives, I can
> definately see why one would think there was an LSI-11 model. I found the
> research most confusing. Personally, I have never heard of one.

to be fair, DEC did play a couple name games, so things are very easy to get
confused over, especially the way most people present information there is no
real distinct difference made between LSI and PDP on their web pages, hence a
metric buttload of confusion.

-brian
-- 
"Oh, shut up Buddha."  -Jesus Christ (South Park)