Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-7/A - S#148

Bolt, Beranek and Newman.

The PDP-7 Service list (1972) shows that machine #148 was shipped to Bolt, Beranek and Newman in January 1967 and consisted of the following options -

Option	S#	Ship	DEC #	Notes
149	000120	0167	018496	4K core memory stack
149	000123	0167	018496	4K memory upgrade to 12K
149	000124	0167	018496	4K memory upgrade to 16K
173	000017	0167	018496	Data interrupt multiplexer
175	000049	0167	018496	Information collector expansion.
177B	000039	0167	018496	Extended arithmetic element
550A	000072	0167	018496	DECtape control, (up to 4x 555's)
KA71A	000049	0167	018496	I/O device package
KA77A	000051	0167	018496	Processor unit
TU55	000297	0167	018496	Single DECtape transport
TU55	000303	0167	018496	Single DECtape transport
76 05105	000000	0167	018496	Unknown

For descriptions of the above options see the full PDP-7 options list.

120 PDP-7 and PDP-7/A systems were forecast to be built in total, but the 1972 18-bit service list available (6.5Mb pdf download) only has details of the 99 known PDP-7 and PDP-7/A systems in the list at that time. We do not have any information about the possible remaining 21 systems, who they were delivered to or even if they actually existed.

The PDP-7 appeared to have sold well into Government research and University sectors with 11 systems shipped to the UK alone, almost 10% of the forecast production run! Serial numbers are concurrent for both PDP-7's and the PDP-7/A's, so the missing 21 could be of either type; however we are reasonably confident that the 99 systems shipped were the only ones that were ever built.

If you know of any information about any of the PDP-7 systems worldwide, options, location of existing systems, spare parts, ancillary bits, software, tapes or manuals, then please contact us.

Documents associated with PDP-7 S#148 - (see below)

An email (Feb 2014) from David Moccia has let us know that machine #148 along with PDP-7/A S#150 were used as front ends to TELCOMP timeshare systems running TELCOMP II. See TELCOMP and BBN Technologies at Wikipedia.