Focal Party Line

Summary

This document serves as a promotional overview and technical justification for the FOCAL programming language, developed by Digital Equipment Corporation for the PDP-8 family of computers.

Key highlights include:

• User Benefits: FOCAL is marketed as easy to learn (requiring less than two minutes of instruction), easy to use due to its forgiving error-handling ("GO?" feature), easy to correct via the "MODIFY" command, and highly powerful with high-precision mathematical capabilities.
• Flexibility and Expansion: The language supports various hardware interfaces (CRT, plotters, printers) and can scale from a single-user 4K system up to multi-user configurations (up to 7 users) using specialized hardware like the DF32 disk.
• Comparison to Competitors: FOCAL is positioned as superior to FORTRAN (due to its simplicity and lack of complex formatting) and more cost-effective/powerful than BASIC (arguing that it requires less hardware, is better for specialized tasks like plotting, and supports re-entrant/recursive programming).
• Configurations and Cost: The latter portion of the document provides detailed tables for PDP-8/L and PDP-8/I configurations, detailing the hardware required, total equipment costs, and monthly maintenance fees for various user-count scenarios.