Editing PDP-10 (section)

==Cancellation and influence==
The PDP-10 was eventually eclipsed by the [[VAX]] [[superminicomputer]] machines (descendants of the [[PDP-11]]) when DEC recognized that the PDP-10 and VAX product lines were competing with each other and decided to concentrate its software development effort on the more profitable VAX.  The PDP-10 product line cancellation was announced in 1983, including cancelling the ongoing [[Jupiter project]] to produce a new high-end PDP-10 processor (despite that project being in good shape at the time of the cancellation) and the Minnow project to produce a desktop PDP-10, which may then have been at the prototyping stage.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.36bit.org/dec/|title=DEC 36-bit Computers|access-date=April 4, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091216153820/http://www.36bit.org/dec/|archive-date=December 16, 2009}}</ref>

This event spelled the doom of [[Incompatible Timesharing System|ITS]] and the technical cultures that had spawned the original [[jargon file]], but by the 1990s it had become something of a badge of honor among old-time hackers to have cut one's teeth on a PDP-10.

The PDP-10 [[assembly language]] instructions LDB and DPB (load/deposit [[byte]]) live on as functions in the [[programming language]] [[Common Lisp]]. See [[Lisp (programming language)#References|the "References" section on the LISP article]]. The 36-bit word size of the PDP-6 and PDP-10 was influenced by the programming convenience of having 2 LISP pointers, each 18 bits, in one word.

[[Will Crowther]] created ''[[Colossal Cave Adventure|Adventure]]'', the prototypical computer adventure game, for a PDP-10. [[Don Daglow]] created the first computer [[baseball]] game (1971) and ''[[Dungeon (video game)|Dungeon]]'' (1975), the first [[role-playing video game]] on a PDP-10. [[Walter Bright]] originally created ''[[Empire (1977 video game)|Empire]]'' for the PDP-10. [[Roy Trubshaw]] and [[Richard Bartle]] created the first [[Multi-user dungeon|MUD]] on a PDP-10. ''[[Zork]]'' was written on the PDP-10. [[Infocom]] used PDP-10s for game development and testing.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.filfre.net/2012/01/zork-on-the-pdp-10 |title=Zork on the PDP-10 |quote=Infocom would develop Zork .. PDP-10 .. hosted .. Incompatible Timesharing System ... ARPANET ...  DMG’s machine ... community .. a sort of extended beta-testing team}}</ref>

[[Bill Gates]] and [[Paul Allen]] originally wrote [[Altair BASIC]] using an [[Intel 8080]] simulator running on a PDP-10 at [[Harvard University]]. Allen repurposed the PDP-10 assembler as a [[cross assembler]] for the 8080 chip.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft |last=Allen |first=Paul |publisher=Portfolio/Penguin |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-101-47645-1 |pages=74}}</ref> They founded [[Microsoft]] shortly after.