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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: pdp-11/55
Message-ID: <8725@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Oct-87 14:26:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.8725
Posted: Wed Oct  7 14:26:02 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Oct-87 14:26:02 EDT
References: <1755@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <275@usl> <29933@sun.uucp>, <2949@phri.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 18

> 	As I remember, the 11/45 was capable of having a certain amount
> (8kbytes?) of MOS or bipolar ram in place of some of the core.  Anybody
> ever have a 45 so equiped?  Did it make much difference?

The little-known 11/50 was an 11/45 packaged with the small amount of fast
memory.  The reason why you don't hear much about it was that it was
sold into a specialized market:  commercial applications running RSTS.
The idea was that you would put the BASIC interpreter into the fast memory,
which would indeed make quite a difference to the performance of RSTS.
It wasn't so useful in a more general environment.  The 55 had enough fast
memory for it to be really practical.

(Incidentally, as I recall -- it's been a while -- there was one other
difference between the 45 and the 55.  The 55 had the faster floating-point
processor originally developed for the 11/70, I think.)
-- 
PS/2: Yesterday's hardware today.    |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
OS/2: Yesterday's software tomorrow. | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry