Computer Technician's Handbook (1971) and Computer Automation PDC 808 (1968)

From: Phil Guerney <guerney_at_bigpond.com>
Date: Tue Nov 27 06:19:08 2001

At a charity book sale I turned up this book* which promised to "turn an
ordinary electronics technician into a computer maintenance specialist". And
what a wide open field it was - as it says in Chapter 1:

"as of some recent reckonong, there were in the neighborhood of some 50,000
computers currently in operation in some capacity or other"

The book used as an example of a "Typical Small Computer" the Computer
Automation PDC 808. The picture of the roughly Altair/Imsai sized box was
actually labelled "PDC 808 Controller". The CCC list says this box was
released in May 1968 (4K of 8-bit core) and there are just a couple of
references to it on the Web I can find, and none from recent years.

The book contains over 200 pages covering this device to the minutest
detail. It seems a shame that such an apparently rare machine was chosen so
we do not have a chance to work through the exercise today - it is rare
sin't it?


*by Brice Ward, published by Foulsham-Tab Ltd (the English version of the
American TAB books)

Phil
Received on Tue Nov 27 2001 - 06:19:08 GMT