PDP-10

PDP-10 n.  [Programmed Data Processor model 10] The machine
   that made timesharing real.  It looms large in hacker folklore
   because of its adoption in the mid-1970s by many university
   computing facilities and research labs, including the MIT AI Lab,
   Stanford, and CMU.  Some aspects of the instruction set (most
   notably the bit-field instructions) are still considered
   unsurpassed.  The 10 was eventually eclipsed by the VAX machines
   (descendants of the PDP-11) when DEC recognized that the 10 and VAX
   product lines were competing with each other and decided to
   concentrate its software development effort on the more profitable
   VAX.  The machine was finally dropped from DEC's line in 1983,
   following the failure of the Jupiter Project at DEC to build a
   viable new model.  (Some attempts by other companies to market
   clones came to nothing; see {Foonly} and {Mars}.)  This event
   spelled the doom of {{ITS}} and the technical cultures that had
   spawned the original Jargon File, but by mid-1991 it had become
   something of a badge of honorable old-timerhood among hackers to
   have cut one's teeth on a PDP-10.  See {{TOPS-10}}, {{ITS}},
   {AOS}, {BLT}, {DDT}, {DPB}, {EXCH}, {HAKMEM},
   {JFCL}, {LDB}, {pop}, {push}.