Nord-10

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Nord-10

Two adjacent NORD-10/S systems
Developer	Norsk Data
Manufacturer	Norsk Data
Product family	Nord
Type	Minicomputer
Generation	3
Release date	1973; 51 years ago (1973)
Lifespan	1973–1979
Discontinued	1979; 45 years ago (1979)
Operating system	Sintran III
CPU	16-bit
Camera	none
Touchpad	none
Predecessor	Nord-1
Successor	Nord-100
Website	example.org

Nord-10 was a medium-sized general-purpose 16-bit minicomputer designed for multilingual time-sharing applications and for real-time multi-program systems, produced by Norsk Data. It was introduced in 1973. The later follow up model, Nord-10/S, introduced in 1975, introduced CPU cache, paging, and other miscellaneous improvements.

The CPU had a microprocessor, which was defined in the manual as a portmanteau of microcode processor, not to be confused with the then nascent microprocessor. The CPU additionally contained instructions, operator communication, bootstrap loaders, and hardware test programs, that were implemented in a 1K read-only memory.

The microprocessor also allowed for customer specified instructions to be built in. Nord-10 had a memory management system with hardware paging extending the memory size from 64 to 256K 16-bit words and two independent protecting systems, one acting on each page and one on the mode of instructions. The interrupt system had 16 program levels in hardware, each with its own set of general-purpose registers.

Note: Much of the following information is taken from a document written by Norsk Data introducing the Nord-10. Some information, particularly about the memory system, may be inaccurate for the later Nord-10/S.^[1]