A team photo of the Digital Equipment Corporation DEC PDP-11/60 team gathered around their finished ‘micro’ computer in the late ’70s.
The /60 was an expensive “middle-class” machine, intended as the successor of the /40. It should have been introduced after the /70, but was delayed at least 12-18 months due to design and debugging problems. It had a writable control store (WCS) for custom instructions, and floating-point instructions were implemented in the CPU microcode. It also had 18-bit memory management. With the FPP option, it had the best floating-point performance among the -11s. As for packaging, it came in the “low boy/high boy” cabinets; the one pictured here is the “high” one. The storage devices could be placed in the upper region; the card cage itself was in the lower half.
Photographed by John Poltrack.
