Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!tekecs!alanj From: alanj@tekecs.UUCP (Alan Jeddeloh) Newsgroups: net.misc Subject: Artificially different products Message-ID: <1604@tekecs.UUCP> Date: Fri, 8-Jul-83 12:24:49 EDT Article-I.D.: tekecs.1604 Posted: Fri Jul 8 12:24:49 1983 Date-Received: Sat, 9-Jul-83 13:11:51 EDT Lines: 27 Ah, yes! the DL-11 ... Later on DEC caught on and started de-populating the boards. If you bought a DL-11A, you got a board minus the RS232 drivers, a DL-11C was minus the current loop drivers. You had to buy a DL-11E to get everything. Back when I was an applications engineer for a Tektronix marketing group I used to keep one of the "good" boards in my desk drawer for building up special systems. As for other manufacturers, CDC also had a few up its sleeve. I think difference between a CDC 3300 and a CDC 3170 was the crystal on the master clock card. (The 3170/3300 were 24-bit, single accumulator, 1's complement, and had virtual memory (before IBM). It did take them a while to get their business instruction unit (string edits/moves/compares &c) to be able to restart after a page fault, but they did it.) I also seem to recall that the difference between some of the original CDC 6000-series was that on the lower performance models the program counters on some of the Peripheral Processors were wired to zero. I think that had something to do with the "barrel" architecture of the PP's -- they couldn't delete any of the circuitry because it was timeshared between the PP's. Can anyone knowledgeable on the CDC 6000's confirm or deny?