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

[johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)]

In article <83A454B9-14A9-4078-A103-940C9A48A7EE at sobco.com>,
Scott Bradner  <sob at sobco.com> wrote:
>this is the story I remember at the time -almost all of  the DG founders were all ex-DEC people
>particularly Ed de Castro who ran the PDP-8 stuff for DEC - the Nova was basically a glorified PDP-8

Having spent a fair amount of time programming a PDP-8, I'd say that
while the Nova had more in common with the 4/5/6/7/8/9* machines than
with the -11, it was not all that much like a PDP-8.  The Nova had
four registers, the -8 had a single accumulator, the Nova was
load/store, while the closest things to load and store the PDP-8 had
were TAD (two's complement add) and DCA (deposit and clear the AC.) 

Frankly, I think the only important difference between the -11 and the
Nova is that the -11 had byte addressing.  The Nova's stripped down
architecture gave it a price advantage in the then-important OEM
market, but that was pretty short term since both were simple enough
to implement in a single package.  Other than that it was more
differences of style.

R's,
John

* - the 5/8 were clearly stripped down versions of the 4/7/9