2. 3rd
epoch in HIS-tory: Minis!
• If you’ve been following this series to date,
you should be familiar with the first 2 HIS
epochs and their strengths & weaknesses:
– 1960 Mainframes – vast improvement over ledger
cards, but huge cost both to the hardware
manufacturer and for inhouse programmers.
– 1970s Shared Systems – affordable for medium &
small hospitals, but mainly financials, no clinicals.
• In the ‘80s, turnkey minicomputer systems solved all 3 problems:
– Cost– hardware manufacturers like DEC & DG introduced minis
that were a fraction of the size and cost of mainframes.
– Clinicals – pioneering vendors like McAuto (yes, the shared giant!)
and HBO (no “C” yet!) developed order entry & results reporting
software that was pre-packaged – just “turn the key!”
3. Minicomputer Hardware Roots
• The development of
minicomputers themselves
actually started way back in
the late 50s, paralleling the
introduction of mainframes;
one of the pioneers was:
– DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) - formed in 1957 by
Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson, both ex-MIT gurus
(about a decade before Neal Pappalardo’s tenure). They
set up shop in an old civil-war era textile mill in
Maynard, Mass. (shades of Ross & Royal Roads in PA?),
and started producing a line of computers both smaller
and cheaper than IBM & the BUNCH Group’s
4. DEC the Halls with PDPs…
• The first prominent line of DEC
minicomputers were called
“Programmable Data
Processors,” or “PDP” in geek.
• In 1959, DEC introduced the
PDP-1, pictured at right.
• Cute piece of DP trivia: remember how IBM’s 360s
used a 1052 terminal as a console, which was little
more than an IBM Selectric typewriter on steroids?
• Well, check out the console for the PDP1: an
electric typewriter, also modified to serve as an I/O
5. Incestuous Interrelationships
The first PDP1 was sold to BBN (Bolt
Bernaek & Newman) of Boston, an
amazing consulting firm with ties to
many early DP initiatives such as
ARPANET (“www” pre-cursor).
• BBN used the PDP1 in the “Hospital Computer Project,”
funded by the NIH and AHA in 1962, staffed by notables such as
Homer Warner (of later IHC fame). Ironically, BBN used the PDP
to pioneer the concept of time-sharing, paving the way for SHAS!
• Massachusetts General Hospital - was the pilot site for this
embryonic on-line HIS clinical system, which used every bit of
the PDP-1’s 16K (that’s K, not Meg, or Gig!) of 18-bit word
memory! Slow response times killed it, but amazing that an
early HIS was the first project for the first minicomputer!
6. PDP Evolution
• After selling ≈50 PDP-1s by 1969, DEC launched a
wave of successors that brought increasing power
at a price far below IBM & the BUNCH’s boxes:
– 24-bit PDP-2, and a 36-bit PDP-3 were developed next,
– Followed by the PDP-4 costing only $65,000 (54 sold)
– And the PDP-9 at only $19,000, of which 445 were sold
- Best-selling of all was the PDP-8, pictured at
right, sold to over 1400 customers. Compare its
refrigerator size to a mainframe’s room-filling
girth! Now, small and medium hospitals could
afford both the capital cost, and find floor space
to fit these boxes in small rooms or closets, while
mainframes usually went in the basement…
7. Other Mini-Makers
• Meanwhile, many more mini
makers multiplied (sorry…)
– Data General – formed in 1968 by
2 ex-DEC-ers, introducing the 16-
bit “Nova” line of minis (pictured
on right – check out the label!)
• Hewlett-Packard – One of the few mini-makers
to survive to this day, HP entered the mini-market
in the 1960s with its 2100 series, pictured at left.
- The 2116 offered up to16K of 16-bit word memory.
• The HP 3000 really took hold in HIS in 1973
- Amazingly, HP 3000s in one form or another (final
version was the “e3000”) were made right up to 2010!
- Later versions of the 3000 cracked the 64-bit word
barrier, something DEC didn’t do until its “Alpha” line.
8. “Big Blue” offered Mini-Blues
• IBM was never one to be left
behind in the early R&D wars
– Mini-mania seemed to sweep
Armonk as IBM released box after
box to keep up with and out-due
its mini rivals in this maxi-market:
• 1969 System/3
• 1975 System/32
• 1976 Series/1
• 1977 System/34
• 1978 System/38
• 1978 8100
• 1983 System/36
• 1985 System/88
• 1988 AS/400
• 1990 RS/6000
• 2000s p & i-Series
9. HIS Mini-Monster: Four Phase
• Another Cupertino firm established in 1967 became
one of the biggest names in the HIS mini market:
• Four Phase – the name coming from a multi-phase
clock in one of their earlier processors, made huge
waves at SMS, McAuto and an upstart called HBO.
• Pictured at right is the System IV/70
- Handled up to 32 CRTs on-line
- “Front-ending” IBM 360/370s
- Memory from 12K to 24K bytes
- Peripherals included:
• IBM Selectric printer (again!)
• Line printers, up to 200 LPM
• 2.5 Meg Disk Drive
10. Minicomputer Roster
• It’s hard to compile (pun intended!) a list of all of the
minis that came pouring into the HIS market in the
70s, but here’s a few more worth noting:
• Wang
• Qantel
• Honeywell
• Xerox
• Varian
• Univac
• TI
• Perkin-Elmer
• Hitachi
• MicroData
• ModComp
• NCR
• GEC
• Harris
• Burroughs
• Prime
11. Platform Profusion
• One of the few negatives to the mini hardware
that flooded the market in the 70s was the
variety of their proprietary data bases,
operating systems and program languages.
• Hospitals who bought a mini system suddenly
found their DP shops pigeon-holed into being
a “DEC shop” or “DG shop” or “IBM shop,”
with their techies speaking VMS or RPG or
Unix…
• Even UNIX had as many variants as there were
manufacturers in this mini tower of Babel.
• Which leads us to next week’s topic: the
“turnkey” software that made minis mighty!
