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Most of the volume of the dishwasher-sized 11/23 was the two 14" removable hard disk packs - much higher capacity than the floppy disks of the day. I recall th
by jonjacky 6y ago
Most of the volume of the dishwasher-sized 11/23 was the two 14" removable hard disk packs - much higher capacity than the floppy disks of the day.
I recall the circuit board with the LSI-11 on it was quite a bit smaller than an IBM PC motherboard. Most of the volume of the packaged LSI-11 systems was I/O and disk storage - there were several models of different sizes, I recall the 11/23 was the largest.
The 11/23 was not a consumer-grade product. I don't think it was intended to compete with PCs.
- mark-r 6y agoI was thinking of the 11/03, not 11/23. And the disks were in a separate enclosure, most of the dishwasher size box was empty air. Yes, the boards in the LSI series were much smaller than the equivalent PDP boards - they had a name for the form factor but I can't remember what it was. Of course I may be misremembering things, this was 40 years ago.
- mark-r 6y agoCuriosity got the better of me, and I decided to look it up on Wikipedia. The board form factor itself didn't have a name, but it was tied to the bus that was used. The PDP-11s used the Unibus, and the LSI-11 and its variants used the Q-bus. They also have a picture of the 11/03, and it's indeed much smaller than I remember. Perhaps I was thinking of the 11/23.