Minicomputer

Digital Equipment Corporation was one of the first manufacturers to offer a computer for less than a million dollars. Its PDP 1, released in 1960, offered a limited amount of power for limited tasks but widened the market dramatically. By its 1970 introduction of the PDP 11, DEC had become a major contender, and others were entering the market. The PDP 11 system came in configurations from small setups to competitors for the IBM 370, and introduced many programmers to the fundamentals of computing. Since then, minicomputers have faced competition from the PC below and lower- cost mainframes above.