Editing Minicomputer (section)

{{short description|Mid-1960s–late-1980s class of smaller computers}}
{{For-text|small modern computers|[[Small form factor (desktop and motherboard)|small form factor]], [[nettop]], or [[single-board computer]]}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2025}}
[[File:Six Minicomputers from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1957 to production end in 1979 - PDP-1, PDP-7, PDP-8, PDP-8-E, PDP-11-70, PDP-15.jpg|thumb|Six different minicomputers (out of many more models) produced by the ''[[Digital Equipment Corporation]]'' (DEC) with the year of introduction in brackets: First row: [[PDP-1]] (1959), [[PDP-7]] (1964), [[PDP-8]] (1965); second row: [[PDP-8/E]] (1970), [[PDP-11/70]] (1975), [[PDP-15]] (1970).]]

A '''minicomputer''', or colloquially '''mini''', is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s,<ref>{{cite book|editor-last1=Henderson|editor-first1=Rebecca M.|editor-last2=Newell|editor-first2=Richard G.|title=Accelerating Energy Innovation: Insights from Multiple Sectors|date=2011|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|isbn=978-0226326832|page=180}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Huang|first1=Han-Way|title=The Atmel AVR Microcontroller: MEGA and XMEGA in Assembly and C|date=2014|publisher=Delmar Cengage Learning|location=Australia; United Kingdom|isbn=978-1133607298|page=4}}</ref> built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than [[Mainframe computer|mainframe]]<ref>{{cite book|last1=Estabrooks|first1=Maurice|title=Electronic technology, corporate strategy, and world transformation |url=https://archive.org/details/electronictechno0000esta |url-access=registration|date=1995|publisher=Quorum Books|location=Westport, Connecticut|isbn=0899309690|page=[https://archive.org/details/electronictechno0000esta/page/53 53]}}</ref> <span class="cleanup-needed-content" style="padding-left:0.1em; padding-right:0.1em; color:var(--color-subtle, #54595d); border:1px solid var(--border-color-subtle, #c8ccd1);">and mid-size</span> computers {{dubious-span|"...and_mid-size"?|text=from [[IBM]] and [[BUNCH|its direct competitors]]|date=March 2025}}. By 21st century-standards however, a mini is an exceptionally large machine. Minicomputers in the traditional technical sense covered here are only small relative to generally even earlier and much bigger machines.<ref> {{cite book|first1=Glenn |last1=Rifkin |first2=George |last2=Harrar |title=The Ultimate Entrepreneur |publisher=Contemporary Books |date=1983 |page=72 |isbn=1-55958-022-4 |quote=John Leng sent back sales reports: ‘Here is the latest minicomputer activity in the land of miniskirts as I drive around in my Mini Minor.' The phrase caught on at DEC, and then the industry trade publications grabbed on to it. The age of the minicomputer was born.}}</ref>

The class formed a distinct group with its own software architectures and operating systems. Minis were designed for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and communication switching, as distinct from calculation and [[record keeping]]. Many were sold indirectly to [[original equipment manufacturer]]s (OEMs) for final end-use application. During the two-decade lifetime of the minicomputer class (1965–1985), almost 100 minicomputer vendor companies formed. Only a half-dozen remained by the mid-1980s.<ref name="Bell 2013">{{cite journal |last=Bell| first=Gordon |author-link1=Gordon Bell |title=Rise and Fall of Minicomputers |journal=Proceedings of the IEEE |date=April 2014 |volume=102 |number=4| doi=10.1109/JPROC.2014.2306257 | s2cid=21352766 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

When single-chip [[CPU]] [[microprocessor]]s appeared in the 1970s, the definition of "minicomputer" subtly shifted: the word came to mean a machine in the middle range of the computing spectrum, between [[mainframe computer]]s and [[microcomputer]]s. The easily-misunderstood term "minicomputer" is less often applied to later like systems; a near-synonymous (IBM-adjacent) expert term for this class of system is "[[midrange computer]]".