DEC manuals

DEC manuals were accumulated by DEC over several decades. Dating, as it did, from the early days of the industry, and originally catering primarily to engineers, who were able to repair and modify their DEC machines, it always had the habit of making available extensive documentation on its machines.

Many have now been scanned, and are available on/through the Internet; this is a huge benefit to the museums and many collectors who now keep, maintain and run collectable DEC gear.

Identification/numbering system

Similar to DEC engineering drawing numbers, DEC manuals all had an identification 'number' (it included letters). There were two different systems: one in use up to about April, 1975; the other, thereafter.

In the first, they had the form 'DEC-ww-xxxxxx-y-z'; 'ww' was a number which indicated which line the manual was for/associated-with (e.g. "10" for the PDP-10, "11" for PDP-11's). The rest were all letters; 'z' indicated the revision level of that particular manual, so the first one had an 'A'.

In the second, they had the form 'ww-xxxx-yy-zzz'. 'ww' was an alphabetic code (similar to DECdrawing codes), which indicated what class of document it was. The following codes are known:

• AA - Software documentation
• AD - Addenda
• AE - Software Product Description
• AV - Reference cards
• DS - Alpha CPU/Chipset documentation
• EB - Books, including Handbooks
• EC - Alpha system component documentation
• EK - Hardware Documentation
• EY - Educational Services

The next field, 'xxxx', indicated which type of system/module the manual was for. 'yy' indicated the type of manual it was; the following typs (again, similar to drawing codes) are known:

• MM - 'Maintenance Manual'
• OP - 'Operator's Manual'
• PG - 'Pocket Service Guide'
• TM - 'Technical Manual'
• UG - 'User Guide'

The 'zzz' was a number indicating the revision level of the manual at hand; it started at '001'.

Online collections

There are several large collections online, on/through the Internet (see links below).

Manx, in addition to indexing many online collections, once hosted copies of several collections (notably Antonio Carlini's large collection). These appear to have been removed (the reason is unknown); confusingly, Manx's database still contains links to copies of things once hosted at Manx, but the files themselves are no longer accessible. Some of the removed files are still accessible through the Internet Archive (see links below), if you have the old Manx URL. Many appear to also be available through VT100.net, but no general index to them there appears to be available; although, oddly enough, some search engines appear to know of them - perhaps because Manx itself still/now links to them!

See also

• DEC engineering drawing numbers
• DEC Documentation
• DEC Unique Product Identifier

External links

• DEC STD 012-1 Documentation Identification Conventions Including Mnemonic Codes - still later specification
• DEC - the primary online collection is at Bitsavers
  • Maintenance Print list
• Manx - Manx indexes many online collections of manuals
  • About Manx
  • Antonio - Manx's copy of Antonio Carlini's collection, in the Internet Archive
  • HCPS - Manx's copy of the HCPS collection, in the Internet Archive
• Documentation - VAXHaven
• Main Scanned Document List - at Wilber Williams' Computer Museum
• classiccmp - Chris Kennedy's archive of Henk Gooijen's scans
• VT100.net
• 'Missing' Digital Equipment Corporation Field Maintenance Print Sets Online