PDP-11/73

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PDP-11/73

The PDP-11/73 is a high-end QBUS PDP-11 system. Confusingly, the CPU board is the KDJ11-B (M8190), the same as the PDP-11/83 - no DEC '-11/xx' system seems to use the earlier KDJ11-A (M8192). (The Microcomputer Products Handbook does refer to the KDJ11-A as the "LSI-11/73 microcomputer", however.)

The difference between the /73 and /83 is that the latter uses PMI main memory, instead as the QBUS memory of the -11/73.

hampage.hu

Quoting: Introduced in 1984. Successor of the PDP-11/23. At that time the components were VLSI, and these PDP-11's were marketed as MicroPDP's (this has in fact begun with the PDP-11/23). The PDP-11/73 had a 15MHz J-11 chip set-based CPU with 22-bit memory management for the 4MB RAM max. Just to make life more complicated, 18 MHz PDP-11/83 CPU boards can also be found in PDP-11/73 systems, as a PDP-11/83 CPU (M8190-A[DE]) with QBUS memory (instead of the PMI memory used in those systems) is called a PDP-/73...

There was no UNIBUS equivalent.(Incorrect. The PDP-11/84 shared the same CPU, and had a UNIBUS.)

The J-11 was manufactured by Harris Semiconductors, and it hasn't been fully completed, it lacked the WCS and CIS options.

A very popular enclosure is displayed to the right: this was the BA23 standing tower configuration, that had place for a 8x4 backplane, an RX50 floppy or TK50 streaming tape drive and an RDxx hard disk. The BA23 could also be rack-mounted.

PDP-11/73 in a different style of box


Further reading

  • MicroPDP-11 Systems Owner's Manual (EK-MIC11-OM) - This, and the three related MicroPDP-11 manuals below, are not specific to the PDP-11/73, but contain a great deal of material which applies to the MicroPDP-11/73

External links