DECmate II

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The DECmate II was a PDP-8 compatible microcomputer introduced in 1982 by Digital Equipment Corporation as the second in its series of DECmate word-processors.

As part of a three-pronged strategy, the company released this model at the same time as the PDP-11-based PRO-380 and the Intel 8088-based Rainbow 100. Like these other machines, it had a monochrome VR201 (VT220-style) monitor, an LK201 keyboard and dual 400K single-sided quad-density 5.25 inch RX50 floppy disk drives. It had 32 Kwords of RAM for use by programs, and a further 32 Kwords containing code which was used for device emulation. Code running in this second bank was nicknamed slushware, in contrast to firmware since it was loaded from floppy disk as the machine booted.

It could be expanded, either by adding a further pair of 5.25 inch floppy disk drives, and it could also support either an additional pair of RX01 or RX02 8 inch floppy disk drives or a winchester disk.

It could also have a coprocessor board added, to allow it to run CP/M. There was a choice of three coprocessor boards, one with a Z80 and 64 KB RAM, and a choice of two boards with both a Z80 and an Intel 8086, the difference being hat they had either 256 KB or 512 KB RAM.

Manufacture ceased in 1986. It was superseded by the DECmate III, introduced in 1984.

[edit] External links

• PDP-8 models, at faq.org