SpaceHobo
Experienced Member
I got into the PDP8 series through a friend who inherited a PDP12 in good condition, and I've been digging into the history of the LINC a little. In particular, I found this answer from a Lincoln Labs person who went on to Digital: https://youtu.be/xT_5PcrVI9Q?t=5790 Long story short, the LINC-8 was rather a clumsy kitbash of the PDP-8 and LINC, and when he was on jury duty he had the spare time to work out how to do it properly, and that became the PDP-12.
But from here, I have questions:
The 12 seems to be a PDP-8/I with a LINC and a rather graceful switchover between the two (right down to runtime code being able to flip back and forth, which kind of blows my mind given the PDPs used twos-complement (like "The Universe" according to one of the MIT HAKMEMs) and the LINC was ones-complement). The 12 looks like the first model to get floating point hardware (due to its huge backplane, perhaps?).
But the LAB-8 seems to be a PDP-8/e in PDP-12 livery (lime peel and chartreuse), with the LINC's I/O facilities (Is that where the vc8e name came from? Is that the same part in the 12?) but no actual LINC processor integration. Am I right about that? Is there any documentation about the history and development of the LAB-8s? Was there more than one in the series, or was it just the LAB-8/e and that was it? Did the Lab-8/e have a special card to adapt to the display and the analogue inputs, and would that card work in any omnibus 8/e?
But from here, I have questions:
The 12 seems to be a PDP-8/I with a LINC and a rather graceful switchover between the two (right down to runtime code being able to flip back and forth, which kind of blows my mind given the PDPs used twos-complement (like "The Universe" according to one of the MIT HAKMEMs) and the LINC was ones-complement). The 12 looks like the first model to get floating point hardware (due to its huge backplane, perhaps?).
But the LAB-8 seems to be a PDP-8/e in PDP-12 livery (lime peel and chartreuse), with the LINC's I/O facilities (Is that where the vc8e name came from? Is that the same part in the 12?) but no actual LINC processor integration. Am I right about that? Is there any documentation about the history and development of the LAB-8s? Was there more than one in the series, or was it just the LAB-8/e and that was it? Did the Lab-8/e have a special card to adapt to the display and the analogue inputs, and would that card work in any omnibus 8/e?