🚀 go-pugleaf

I briefly saw a PDP-4 in the Maynard Mill Complex, and it may very well
be the machine from the picture.  It had a Model 28 baudot teletype console,
and small Alco-type snap switches on the front panel.  (Much harder to use
than later designs such as the PDP-8.)

But some of those captions are confusing:  wasn't the PDP-7 not actually
wire-wrapped, but soldered like the PDP-5, and used Systems Modules?  The
PDP-9 was definitely constructed like the PDP-8, using Gardner-Denver
automatic wire-wrap equipment, so why would a forerunner be essentially
the same design?

In any case, DEC has been known to "fake" some of those pictures for the
add copy.  One rather infamous picture of what is alledgedly a PDP-15
panel actually has an 8/l panel as part of it, and upside-down!

A PDP-12 photo shows something that was never put into production: lettering
in lower-case on the silk-screen.

I was once shown the room where all the "sexy" cabinets for the early COS-300
systems were photographed.  These cabinets were painted with bright colors,
and there was even a silly plastic front plate over a TU56 DECtape, as well
as a modified TU-10 where the drive is low in the cabinet, but has a
modified control panel made to fit into the top of the lower cabinet.  All
of the machines were places over various fabrics on the floor to achieve a
"stage presence" or some sort of "office of the future" notion, etc.  Some
of these pictures are often found in early COS-300 manuals or associated
ad copy.

The level of hype throughout all these ads is consistent with the thread
about the irrelevance of "flip chips" as a concept, as opposed to the name
that became applied to the modules, regardless of actual component type.
Apparently DEC always used the same sort of ad agency, which was obsessed with
dramatic camera angles, etc., to suggest some sort of futuristic look to all
of the machines back then.

There's even a funny shot of a KA-10 with a few DECtape drives, implying that
an extra-large cabinet was the entire PDP-10 system in useful form.  Several
years later, the opposite extreme was achieved, with a poster of a typical
computer-center-like layout with an aerial view, raised floor, many cabinets,
and a legend explaining what each cabinet group was used for, etc.  A partial
version of this picture became a back cover for at least one PDP-10 manual.

cjl