Minicomputer

For small modern computers, see small form factor, nettop, or single-board computer.

A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers. Minicomputers are small relative to earlier and bigger machines.

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 manufacturers (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.

When single-chip MOSFET CPU microprocessors 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 computers and microcomputers. 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".

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