PDP-10

[Programmed Data Processor model 10] 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}, {BLT}, {DDT}, {EXCH}, {HAKMEM}, {pop}, {push}. See also http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/.

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