Computer is an electronic equipment, even when most unexpected, utilized in nearly every area. Therefore this age is referred to as the IT age. Now, without technology, we can’t conceive a world. It consists of both the hardware and the software. The hardware includes all physical parts of the computer such as the software’s keyboard, mouse, monitor and so on, whereas all computer applications and languages are named software. Computers are being utilized by millions of people worldwide and are not just used by engineers and scientists.
The DEC 10 computer system is actually known as DEC PDP 10. It was among those computers which were introduce in the mid-nineties and it belongs to the second era of computers. The first DEC PDP 10 computing system was launched in the computer market in the year 1960. This computing system was manufactured by a company named as the Digital Equipment Corporation and these computing systems were given the name of PDP which is abbreviated as Programmed data processor.
Software
TENEX, a proprietary alternative operating system created by BBN, soon gained traction among researchers. Later, DEC transferred TENEX to the KL10, significantly improved it, and gave it the name TOPS-20, creating the DECSYSTEM-20 series.
MIT created the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), Compatible Time-Sharing System, to run on their IBM 709 (and later a modified IBM 7094 system), as well as the Incompatible Timesharing System , Incompatible Timesharing System, to run on their PDP-6 (and later a modified PDP-10) the names were related because the IBM and the DEC/PDP hardware was different, making them “incompatible”. Tom Knight chose the ITS moniker, which “was a play on” the CTSS name.
Instructions
There are 16 36-bit, all-purpose registers. Other than register 0, the right half of these registers can be utilised for indexing. A few instructions work with register pairs. The “PC Word” is made up of an 18-bit Program Counter in the right half and a 13-bit Condition Register in the left half. Only a few instructions may access the condition register, which stores additional bits from the outcomes of arithmetic operations. These registers are the first 16 words of main memory in the original KA-10 systems. They are implemented as registers in the CPU via the “fast registers” hardware option, although they are still accessible as the first 16 words of memory. By loading code into the registers and then jumping to the proper location, some software makes use of this to its advantage. For instance, one version of the garbage collector in Maclisp is implemented using this technique. The CPU has registers in all later models.
Features of the DEC 10
The DEC PDP 10 had many unique and advance features in it which made this computing system the best computing system of that era of computers. One of the most unique and advance thing about the DEC PDP 10 was its upgraded and improved hardware that was a brilliant piece of architecture in the computer industry. The instruction and command set of the DEC PDP 10 was quite similar with its previous models but it used the byte instructions for the input.
The DEC 10 was the machine that introduced the time sharing concept and not even just introduced this but also made it common all over the world. Due to these features the DEC 10 became very famous and it also became an important part of the universities all over the globe for their research and problem solving processes. The Harvard University was among those famous universities that were using the DEC 10 computing system in their labs in order to perform research and these systems were an essential part of their labs.
The DEC 10 computing system introduced many different models of computers to the world in the mid-nineties during the second era of computers. These computing models were quite similar to each other and very few changes were there among them as per the requirement of the users. In the year 1983 the down fall of the DEC 10 computing system started when the orders were given from the authorities that no more DEC 10 computers will be manufactured and launched in the market.
The reason behind this approach was much unrelated with the DEC 10 computers because all this happened due to the invention of the supercomputers in that year but till this time of the year the DEC 10 computing system company had made enough profit out of their models and they have ruled the industry for a long time and near about fifteen hundred of their DEC 10 system they have sold to the world and this really is a great number.
USE
At its height, CompuServe ran more than 200 loosely linked computers across three data centres in Columbus, Ohio, making it one of the biggest collections of DECsystem-10 architecture systems ever built. These systems served as “hosts” for CompuServe, which gave users access to commercial programmes and the CompuServe Information Service. The first such systems were purchased from DEC, but once DEC switched from the PDP-10 to the VAX architecture, CompuServe and other PDP-10 users started purchasing plug-compatible computers from Systems Concepts. In order to handle various billing and routing tasks as of January 2007, CompuServe was running a limited number of PDP-10 architecture computers.
END of DEC 10
When DEC opted to focus its software development efforts on the more lucrative VAX after realising that the PDP-10 and VAX product lines were in direct competition with one another, the PDP-10 was eventually surpassed by the VAX superminicomputer machines (descendants of the PDP-11). The Minnow project to create a desktop PDP-10, which may have then been in the prototyping stage, and the ongoing Jupiter project to create a new high-end PDP-10 processor were both cancelled when the PDP-10 product line was announced in 1983, despite both projects being in good shape at the time of the cancellation.