[ih] words and bytes [Re: "network unix"]

[johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine)]

>    > There was a competing 16 bit word addressed design by the designer of
>    > the PDP-8, which after DEC rejected it became the DG Nova.
>
> I hear this repeated a lot, but I'm not sure it's accurate. That competing
> design has surfaced (Google "PDP-X"), and it's not very much like the Nova.

Huh, I'd missed that.  You're right, it was more like a stripped down 
PDP-10 than the Nova.  But it's definitely true that Ed DeCastro who 
designed the PDP-8 and I believe the PDP-X left to form Data General.

Now I'm thinking about the eventual fate of DEC and DG, both clobbered by 
PCs.  DEC came out with single chip package PDP-8 and J-11, and DG with 
single chip Micronova, but they were both too little too late.

I guess the PDP-11 was more influential, since the x86 series uses the 
11's (at the time) unsual little-endian byte addressing.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly