Trying to reconstruct in my mind something I saw every weekday 40+ years ago. Actually this is the second location I worked from. We moved twice after this location. Thank goodness for old pictures I got from Annual reports (all in B&W). There were no cell phones with cameras everywhere back then. This newer (mostly blue) 11/70 was the one that was there when I started.
Early 1980s. Newer DEC PDP 11/70 (below) with 300MB removable disk packs (CDC 9766) on the left.
You can see the decdatasystem logo (and system color) below, like this (not from my pics)…
There was also a Data General Nova 3, it’s to the right of the PDP-11/70 below.
I found the below pic of a Nova 3, to confirm the model, on the Internet…
I also found the below interesting FAQ on the internet.
“It is worth mentioning that it is generally accepted that the Data General Nova was originally developed as the PDP-X, a 16-bit multi-register version of the PDP-8. “
It also had blinking lights and console switches like many PDP-11/70s.
I really had nothing to do with the DG, as we called it. However I do have an interesting piece of trivia concerning our DG. It’s OS was Blis/Cobol and was written in COBOL.
I read and still own a fascinating book (it won some awards) about creating a Data General 32 bit minicomputer (not a Nova 3), called “The Soul of a New Machine“.
It’s a little hard to tell but it appears that it didn’t have blinking lights and console switches.
I found the following explanation…”The PDP-11/70 is also available with a so-called remote console. This remote console is less “flashy” – it has only a system power key switch, a remote push button and just a few indicator lights”.
You can hardly notice the 11/70 just perhaps this (also not from my pics)…
I didn’t even remember, it didn’t have blinking lights and console switches.
I found this video showing this model…
Our large (for a PDP 11/70)…CDC 9766 300MB disk drives.
Newer PDP-11/70 on left. The older PDP-11/70 on back wall we acquired from a company getting rid of it. It did have the console lights and switches. Also below 2 decwriters and possibly a Lear Siegler ADM-3A Dumb Terminal. Is that 4 line printers behind the terminals? It looks like it. I do know we printed a lot of forms. If my memory is right we had our own zip code because we had so much mail.
The older PDP was more along this style and color, from a scan of my pdp11/70 Processor Handbook …
This was a great exercise. I really didn’t realize how much I forgot. A picture is truly worth a thousand words!
We eventually outgrew the PDP-11/70s and replaced them with an IBM 4300 series (4341 maybe) running VM/VSE. As a fan of DEC…I was kinda hoping for a VAX replacement. However since we processed many EBCDIC customer tapes from outside companies, the EBCDIC IBM mainframe made better sense.
I hid peoples faces out of respect for their privacy.