PDP-10
[Programmed Data Processor model 10] n. The machine that
made timesharing real. It looms large in hacker folklore because
of its adoption in the mid-1970s by many university computing
facilities and research labs, including the MIT AI Lab, Stanford,
and CMU. Some aspects of the instruction set (most notably the
bit-field instructions) are still considered unsurpassed. The 10
was eventually eclipsed by the VAX machines (descendants of the
PDP-11) when DEC recognized that the 10 and VAX product lines were
competing with each other and decided to concentrate its software
development effort on the more profitable VAX. The machine was
finally dropped from DEC's line in 1983, following the failure of
the Jupiter Project at DEC to build a viable new model. (Some
attempts by other companies to market clones came to nothing; see
Foonly and Mars.) This event spelled the doom of
ITS and the technical cultures that had spawned the original
Jargon File, but by mid-1991 it had become something of a badge of
honorable old-timerhood among hackers to have cut one's teeth on a
PDP-10. See TOPS-10, ITS, AOS, BLT, DDT,
DPB, EXCH, HAKMEM, JFCL, LDB, pop,
push, Appendix A.
