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How did the PCP-11 get its name?

hackerb9

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2015
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Earth, currently.
Q: What was prevalent in the 70s, relatively inexpensive, but surprisingly powerful?
A: PDP minicomputers. Also, PCP, the mind-altering drug.

So, I've been toying around with fixing a DEC PCP-11 from the early 90s and I keep wondering about the name. I grew up using vaxen and heard of the fabled PDP-11s of yore, so I'm rather enjoying having a computer with a name so similar, yet so amusingly wrong. Could it really be just a coincidence that "DEC PCP-11" sounds more like a drug than a laptop?

Does anyone know the true story of how it came to be named? I like to imagine that it was an in-joke of disgruntled engineers at DEC assigned to slap together an IBM PC compatible when they'd rather be working on a "real" computer. They'd be joking around one day and say,

"Management must be high to be making us do this."

"Yeah, we should tell marketing to advertise it as, DEC now sells PC laptops! Are they schizophrenic? Nope, they're just on a bad trip!"

"How about, You're Not Hallucinating, You're on a PCP-11!"

"Nice! Marketing should have no problem selling something called Digital Angel Dust."

Or at least, I hope that's what happened. But, does anyone actually know?
 
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