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nication switching as distinct from calculation and record keeping many were sold indirectly to original equipment manufacturers oems for final end use application during the two decade lifetime of the minicomputer class 1965 1985 almost 100 minicomputer vendor companies formed only a half dozen remained by the mid 1980s 5 when single chip mosfet cpu microprocessors appeared in the 1970s the definition of minicomputer subtly shifted the word came to mean a machine in the middle range of the computing spectrum between mainframe computers and microcomputers 6 the easily misunderstood term minicomputer is less often applied to later like systems a near synonymous ibm adjacent expert term for this class of system is midrange computer history edit definition edit data general nova serial number 1 on display at the computer history museum the term minicomputer developed in the 1960s 7 to describe the smaller computers that became possible with the use of transistors and core memory technologies minimal instruction sets and less expensive peripherals such as the ubiquitous teletype model 33 asr 5 8 they usually took up one or a few 19 inch rack cabinets compared with the large mainframes that could fill a room 9 later minicomputers tended to be more compact and while still distinct in terms of architecture and function some models eventually shrank to a similar size as large microcomputers in terms of relative computing power compared to contemporary mainframes small systems that were similar to minicomputers had been available from the 1950s in particular there was an entire class of compact vacuum tube based drum machines such as the univac 1101 1950 and the bendix g 15 and lgp 30 both 1956 all of which shared some features of the minicomputer class similar models using magnetic delay line memory followed in the early 1960s these machines however were essentially designed as small mainframes using a custom chassis and often supporting only peripherals from the same company in contrast the machines that became known as minicomputers were often designed to fit into a standard chassis and deliberately designed to use common devices such as the asr 33 another common difference was that most small machines before the 1970s were not general purpose in that they were designed for a specific role such as engineering 10 13 process control or accounting on these machines programming was generally carried out in their custom machine language or even hard coded into a plugboard although some used a form of basic citation needed example needed dec wrote regarding their pdp 5 that it was the world s first commercially produced minicomputer 11 it meets most definitions of mini in terms of power and size but was designed and built to be used as an instrumentation system in labs not as a general purpose computer 12 many similar examples of small special purpose machines exist from the early 1960s including the uk ferranti argus and soviet um 1nkh the cdc 160 circa 1960 is sometimes pointed to as an early example of a minicomputer as it was small transistorized and relatively inexpensive however its basic price of 100 000 equivalent to 1 088 301 in 2025 and custom desk like chassis places it within the small system or midrange computer 13 category as opposed to the more modern use of the term minicomputer nevertheless the cdc 160 remains a strong contender for the term first minicomputer 12 provided the earlier drum machines e g sea cab 500 are excluded as non transistorized 1960s and 1970s success edit most computing histories point to the 1964 introduction of digital equipment corporation s dec 12 bit pdp 8 as the first minicomputer 14 some of this is no doubt due to dec s widespread use of the term starting in the mid 1960s 15 smaller systems including those from dec such as the pdp 5 and linc 16 had existed prior to this point but it was the pdp 8 combination of small size general purpose orientation and low price that puts it firmly within the modern definition its introductory price of 18 500 17 equivalent to 189 005 in 2025 places it in an entirely different market segment than earlier examples such as the cdc 160 in contemporary terms the pdp 8 was a runaway success ultimately selling 50 000 examples a follow on versions using small scale integrated circuits further lowered the cost and size of the system its success led to widespread imitation and the creation of an entire industry of minicomputer companies along massachusetts route 128 including data general wang laboratories and prime computer other popular minis from the era were the hp 2100 honeywell 316 and ti 990 raytheon rds 500 seismic processing system in benghazi in 1978 varian data machines system connected to analogue tape playback system in 1984 early minis had a variety of word sizes with dec s 12 and 18 bit systems being typical examples the introduction and standardization of the 7 bit ascii character set led to the move to 16 bit systems with the late 1969 data general nova being a notable entry in this space by the early 1970s most minis were 16 bit including dec s pdp 11 for a time minicomputer was almost synonymous with 16 bit as the larger mainframe machines almost always used 32 bit or larger word sizes in a 1970 survey the new york times suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than us 25 000 equivalent to 207 000 in 2025 18 with an input output device such as a teleprinter and at least four thousand words of memory that is capable of running programs in a higher level language such as fortran or basic 19 the typical customer was a department in a large company at which the finance department s mainframe was too busy to serve others 10 12 raytheon rds 704 onsite seismic processing system in mogadishu in 1974 as integrated circuit design improved especially with the introduction of the 7400 series integrated circuits minicomputers became smaller easier to manufacture and as a result less expensive they were used in manufacturing process control telephone switching and to control laboratory equipment in the 1970s they were the hardware that was used to launch the computer aided design cad industry 20 and other similar industries where a small dedicated system was needed the boom in worldwide seismic exploration for oil and gas in the early 1970s saw the widespread use of minicomputers in dedicated processing centres close to the data collection crews raytheon data systems rds 704 and later rds 500 were predominantly the systems of choice for nearly all the geophysical exploration as well as oil companies 21 22 at the launch of the mits altair 8800 in 1975 radio electronics magazine referred to the system as a minicomputer although the term microcomputer soon became usual for personal computers based on single chip microprocessors at the time microcomputers were 8 bit single user relatively simple machines running simple program launcher operating systems such as cp m or ms dos while minis were much more powerful systems that ran full multi user multitasking operating systems such as vms and unix the tandem computers nonstop product line shipped its first fully fault tolerant cluster computer in 1976 23 24 25 around the same time minis began to move upward in size although several 24 and 32 bit minis had entered the market earlier it was dec s 1977 vax which they referred to as a superminicomputer or supermini that caused the mini market to move en masse to 32 bit architectures this provided ample headroom even as single chip 16 bit microprocessors such as the tms 9900 and zilog z8000 appeared in the later 1970s most mini vendors introduced their own single chip processors based on their own architecture and used these mostly in low cost offerings while concentrating on their 32 bit systems examples include the intersil 6100 single chip pdp 8 dec t 11 pdp 11 micronova and fairchild 9440 nova and tms9900 ti 990 mid 1980s and 1990s decline edit minicomputer companies historically competed on the price and speed of their computers instead of marketing and advertising 26 by the early 1980s the 16 bit minicomputer market had all but disappeared as newer 32 bit microprocessors began to improve in performance those customers who required more performance than these offered had generally already moved to 32 bit systems by this time but it was not long before this market also began to come under threat the motorola 68000 offered a significant percentage of the performance of a typical mini in a desktop platform true 32 bit processors such as the national semiconductor ns32016 motorola 68020 and intel 80386 soon followed by the mid 1980s high end microcomputers offered cpu performance equal to low end and mid range minis and the new risc approach promised performance levels well beyond the fastest minis and even high end mainframes all that really separated micros from the mini market was storage and memory capacity both of these began to be addressed through the later 1980s 1 mb of ram became typical by around 1987 desktop hard drives rapidly pushed past the 100 mb range by 1990 and the introduction of inexpensive and easily deployable local area network lan systems provided solutions for those looking for multi user systems the introduction of workstations opened new markets for graphics based systems that the terminal oriented minis could not even address minis remained a force for those using existing software products or those who required high performance multitasking but the introduction of newer operating systems based on unix began to yield highly practical replacements for these roles as well for computational science clusters of commodity pcs largely replaced minicomputers mini vendors began to rapidly disappear through this period data general responded to the changing market by focusing entirely on the high performance file server market embracing a role within large lans that appeared resilient this did not last novell netware rapidly pushed such solutions into niche roles and later versions of microsoft windows did the same to novell dec decided to move into the large computer space instead introducing the vax 9000 mainframe in 1989 but it was a flop in the market and disappeared after almost no sales the company then attempted to enter the workstation and server markets with the dec alpha but was too late to save the company and they eventually sold their remains to compaq in 1998 by the end of the decade all of the classic vendors were gone data general prime computervision honeywell and wang failed merged or were bought out today only a few proprietary minicomputer architectures survive the ibm system 38 operating system which introduced many advanced concepts lives on with ibm s as 400 great efforts were made by ibm to enable programs originally written for the ibm system 34 and system 36 to be moved to the as 400 after being rebranded multiple times the as 400 platform was replaced by ibm power systems running ibm i in contrast competing proprietary computing architectures from the early 1980s such as dec s vax wang vs and hewlett packard s hp 3000 have long been discontinued without a compatible upgrade path openvms was ported to hp alpha and intel ia 64 itanium cpu architectures and now runs on x86 64 processors tandem computers which specialized in reliable large scale computing was acquired by compaq in 1997 and in 2001 the combined entity merged with hewlett packard 27 the nonstop kernel based nonstop product line was re ported from mips processors to itanium based processors branded as hp integrity nonstop servers as in the earlier migration from stack machines to mips microprocessors all customer software was carried forward without source changes the nsk operating system now termed nonstop os continues as the base software environment for the nonstop servers and has been extended to include support for java and integration with popular development tools such as visual studio and eclipse later hewlett packard would split into hp and hewlett packard enterprise the nonstop products and the dec products would then be sold by hpe industrial impact and heritage edit database software 10 page needed is an example of an area where a variety of companies emerged that built turnkey systems around minicomputers with specialized software and in many cases custom peripherals that addressed specialized problems such as computer aided design computer aided manufacturing process control manufacturing resource planning and so on many if not most minicomputers were sold through these original equipment manufacturers and value added resellers several pioneering computer companies first built minicomputers such as dec data general and hewlett packard hp who later referred to its hp 3000 minicomputers as servers rather than minicomputers and although today s pcs and servers are clearly microcomputers physically architecturally their cpus and operating systems have developed largely by integrating features from minicomputers citation needed in the software context the relatively simple oss for early microcomputers were usually inspired by minicomputer oss such as cp m s similarity to digital s single user os 8 and rt 11 and multi user rsts time sharing system also the multiuser oss of today are often either inspired by or directly descended from minicomputer oss citation needed unix was originally a minicomputer os while the windows nt kernel the foundation for all current versions of microsoft windows borrowed design ideas liberally from vms many of the first generation of pc programmers were educated on minicomputer systems 28 29 examples edit at t 3b series computers basic four bendix g 15 a vacuum tube computer sometimes considered an early mini cii mitra 15 control data s cdc 160a and cdc 1700 ctl modular one from the uk dec pdp and vax series data general nova and eclipse series gec 4000 series hewlett packard hp 3000 series and hp 2100 series honeywell bull dps 6 dps 6000 series k 202 first polish minicomputer ibm midrange computers olivetti l1 series interdata 7 32 and 8 32 norsk data nord 1 nord 10 and nord 100 prime computer products including the 200 300 400 and 50 series pyramid technology products raytheon rds 704 and rds 500 ridge computers ridge 32 and ridge 3200 series tandem computers nonstop product line focusing on fault tolerance texas instruments ti 990 wang vs series see also edit the soul of a new machine about the development of data general s eclipse mv minicomputers in the early 1980s charles babbage institute history of computing hardware 1960s present superminicomputer maxicomputer notes edit for comparison the cdc 160 sold about 50 units bibliography edit weitzman cay 1974 minicomputer systems structure implementation and application englewood cliffs new jersey prentice hall isbn 9780135842270 oclc 3255458 references edit henderson rebecca m newell richard g eds 2011 accelerating energy innovati...