From nobody Fri Aug  7 12:12:19 1998
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From: dlm (at) opost.com (Dan Murphy)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Subject: Minnow
Date: 06 Aug 1998 17:42:37 +0000
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pechter@news.monmouth.com (Bill Pechter) writes:

> OK... for a poor old DEC History buff worked primarily on PDP11's and Vaxen...
> what's the Minnow project?

    Ah, how quickly it's forgotten...
    
    Minnow was a project to build a small PDP-10 - desktop or
    deskside. 

    With the fading light of history, people have come to think of
    Jupiter as the follow-on to the KL10.  It wasn't, at least not the
    first attempt at a follow-on.  The first attempt was called
    Dolphin, and it was a project that was supposed to create BOTH a
    new 36-bit system AND a new VAX system more powerful than the
    11/780.

    In that same era (78-79), a very backroom project began in
    Marlboro to build a much smaller 36-bit machine -- a desktop
    PDP-10.  Somehow fish names were in vogue then, so it became known
    as Minnow.  It was started by Ron Bingham.  I joined the project a
    while after it started to work on porting TOPS-20 to it.

    Before being cancelled along with Dolphin, this project built a
    prototype which was running well enough to demonstrate some exec
    mode programs.  It consisted of three large PC boards: a processor
    board including 8 UARTS for comm lines, a memory board, and a disk
    controller board. These could sit on a desk top but were
    envisioned as residing in a deskside type cabinet with one fixed
    and one removable disk.  Ken Olsen came by one day to see the
    prototype and pronounced it "neat".  That didn't save it, though.

    Had this machine not been cancelled, I believe it would have been
    a significant entry in what later became the workstation market.
    It was not a complete workstation, since we had not anticipated
    the value in having an integrated display system, but it would
    have been a "personal" machine and a product with cost/performance
    several years ahead of the market.

    It succumbed in part to the corporate determination to adhere to
    the VAX one-architecture strategy.  While the Minnow product
    seemed attractive, it was decided that it would send the "wrong
    message" to introduce a non-VAX machine in that price range.

    Interestingly, the Minnow had limited support even in the 10/20
    groups in Marlboro.  Many people saw 36-bit machines as living
    only in glass-wall computer rooms and surrounded with big disks
    and tape drives, and couldn't figure out how a small one in an
    office could possibly be useful.  This seemed to be part of a
    larger conservatism that prevented or discouraged significant
    attempts to sustain and expand the 36-bit business.
    
    (Some of the foregoing extracted from my article "Origins and
    Development of TOPS-20" -
    http://www.opost.com/dlm/prof/hbook.html.)
    
    
    dlm