DEC PDP-10 KA10 Control Panel

This DEC PDP-10 KA10 Control Panel was donated by Bruce Maier of Long Island New York. The recently retired Mr. Maier operated this early DEC machine, PDP-10 System Number 105 Suffolk BOCES III (Now Western Suffolk BOCES) at its LIRICS (Long Island Regional Instructional Computer System) in Dix Hills, NY.

The KA10 had a maximum main memory capacity (both virtual and physical) of 256 kilowords (equivalent to 1152 kilobytes). As supplied

by DEC, it did not include paging hardware; memory management consisted of two sets of protection and relocation registers, called

"base and bounds" registers. This allowed each half of a user's address space to be limited to a set section of main memory, designated by the base physical address and size. This allowed the model (later used by Unix) of separate read-only shareable code segment (normally the high segment) and read-write data/stack segment (normally the low segment). Some KA10 machines, first at MIT, and later at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), were modified to add virtual memory and support for demand paging, as well as more physical memory.

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Click on the image for a larger view.

Bruce Maier holds the PDP-10 KA10 Console from System Number 105.