[Info-vax] New VSI Roadmap (yipee!)

[Bob Koehler]

In article <md2t3r$kpk$2 at dont-email.me>, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
> 
> Ok, in 1974, what were the affordable options.  For small companies, a 
> multi-million dollar IBM system was not feasible.  A quarter million 
> dollar PDP-11 system was one of the better options.

   For small companies timesharing on mainframes cold be, and often was
   purchased.

   For PDP-11 there has always been 32 bit integers native and all the
   instructions needed to do extended precision integer arithmetic.

   Also, many PDP-11 could be ordered with the commercial instruction
   set options, which I think includes decimal support as well as COBOL
   compilers that knew how to use it.