crichmon@digi.lonestar.org (Charles Richmond) (06/06/91)
A friend of mine in college told me about the Sigma 9 computer
that he used at his previous university. He said it was great
for interactive use. I believe that the computer was designed
by Scientific Data Systems (SDS). Later this company sold
out to Xerox and became Xerox Data Systems (XDS). I would
like to know more about the hardware and software of the Sigma 9
and perhaps its sibling, the Sigma 7. Particularly:
1) How many registers did the machines have, and did any
have special uses?
2) What was the instruction set like? (Maybe someone has
a reference card or such and can provide a complete
list of the numeric opcodes)
3) Was this a 32-bit machine?
4) What high level languages were available for these machines?
5) What operating system was used and how does it compare to
current systems such as Unix?
6) What technology was used in the hardware? (IC's, transistors,
tubes, TTL, RTL, etc.)
7) Any interesting stories related to these machines?
8) Does anyone still use these machines, or clones of them?
9) Where would one go to find hardware manuals or even junked
machines of this family?
According to Steven Levy in the book _Hackers_, Peter Deutsch
did an operating system for the XDS940 that Community Memory used
in San Francisco in the 70's. This machine was used as a means
of communication, for people with like ideas or things to sell.
Are you still out there, Mr. Deutsch? I remember seeing some
postings on the net from you. Maybe you can take time to fill
in the details of the XDS940.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Charles Richmond crichmon@digi.lonestar.org
hays@iSC.intel.com (Kirk Hays) (06/07/91)
In article <1991Jun5.231450.25856@digi.lonestar.org>, crichmon@digi.lonestar.org (Charles Richmond) writes: |> A friend of mine in college told me about the Sigma 9 computer |> that he used at his previous university. He said it was great |> for interactive use. I believe that the computer was designed |> by Scientific Data Systems (SDS). Later this company sold |> out to Xerox and became Xerox Data Systems (XDS). I would |> like to know more about the hardware and software of the Sigma 9 |> and perhaps its sibling, the Sigma 7. Particularly: I was a user of a Sigma 6 (single processor Sigma 9) in the 70's at Northern Arizona University. Some of my recollections may be incorrect, so others are welcome to correct them. The machine was decommisioned in 1981, purchased in 1967-1968 (or so), and was worth more for the gold in the circuits than was paid for it originally. |> 1) How many registers did the machines have, and did any |> have special uses? 16 general purpose registers, with r0 wired to zero. The calling convention dedicated r15 to return address - I don't remember the rest. |> 2) What was the instruction set like? (Maybe someone has |> a reference card or such and can provide a complete |> list of the numeric opcodes) Typical CISC of the era - included byte translation instructions, and an `execute' instruction. My manual set has disappeared into the mists of time, I fear. |> 3) Was this a 32-bit machine? Oddly enough, I remember this as a 36 bit machine, but this may be an artifact of everything being documented in octal. |> 4) What high level languages were available for these machines? I remember FORTRAN and SNOBOL. Seems that the snobol was from Toronto. There might have been a BASIC interpreter. System calls were all named M$<something>, like M$READ and M$WRITE. The assembler was a macro aqssembler, and was quite powerful. The supplied editor is one of the best line-oriented editors I ever used, with very, very powerful string matching and replacement syntax. Almost as powerful as GNU emacs in that single regard. |> 5) What operating system was used and how does it compare to |> current systems such as Unix? There were several - the only one I used was CP-V (pronounced cee-pee-five). It was originally a batch-only machine. |> 6) What technology was used in the hardware? (IC's, transistors, |> tubes, TTL, RTL, etc.) transistors and cores. Ours had 128K of core, and might have had a second CPU (an upgrade option for the sigma 6, which made it identical to the sigma 9). It supported 40 interactive users pretty well, but response time went out the door above 50 users. |> 7) Any interesting stories related to these machines? The backing store was a 20MB hard disk that was a 3 foot diameter disk of aluminum, 2 inches thick, that was spun by a motor using wall power, and that turned the generator for the system power. Cleaned the power supply, and provided enough power to shut down the machine cleanly when there was a power failure. All that, and disk storage, too! On power failure (or normal shutdown), CP-V would light up the front panel, and play the "Star Spangled Banner". A lot of the software was named for animals, although I can't remember an example. The debugger was named "ddt". [CP-6 (*NOT* CP-VI), for the Honeywell DPS-8 machines, expanded on the "animal name" tradition] Some of the early manuals were rather `racey' and sexist, with comments about putting processes (which were female, so they could `birth' children) to bed. |> 8) Does anyone still use these machines, or clones of them? I wouldn't be surprised if one or two still were in use - they were very reliable, and not too obnoxious, software wise. The system software was bullet proof, and was on release F01, which would be the first patch after the sixth major release (Alpha would have been A00). Clones? I doubt it. |> 9) Where would one go to find hardware manuals or even junked |> machines of this family? Call Honeywell. Also, there are a lot of old CP-Ver's out there. I doubt much hardware survives, due to the gold salvage value. Ah, nostalgia - I hope I didn't misremember too much. -- Kirk Hays - NRA Life. Message for Timothy Fay - "Do not eat/wear/exploit things you will not kill."
dperks@hobbit.gandalf.ca (Dave Perks) (06/07/91)
In <1395@ssdintel.isc.intel.com> hays@iSC.intel.com (Kirk Hays) writes: >On power failure (or normal shutdown), CP-V would light up the front panel, and >play the "Star Spangled Banner". I think it also displayed "Th-Th-Thats All, Folks" after successful shutdown. >A lot of the software was named for animals, although I can't remember an >example. The file system backup program was "Squirrel" --dave perks
tsw@apple.com (Tom Watson) (06/08/91)
Charles Richmond (crichmon@digi.lonestar.org) writes: >A friend of mine in college told me about the Sigma 9 computer >that he used at his previous university. He said it was great >for interactive use. I believe that the computer was designed >by Scientific Data Systems (SDS). Later this company sold >out to Xerox and became Xerox Data Systems (XDS). I would >like to know more about the hardware and software of the Sigma 9 >and perhaps its sibling, the Sigma 7. Particularly: > > 1) How many registers did the machines have, and did any > have special uses? The machine has 16 general registers, registers 1-7 were used as index registers. Instructions addressed bytes, halfwords (16 bits), words (32 bits), and doublewords (64 bits). Included stack instructions that used a stack descriptor (multiple stacks). > 2) What was the instruction set like? (Maybe someone has > a reference card or such and can provide a complete > list of the numeric opcodes) The instruction set was fairly complete, it was ment to compete with the IBM 360 series, and even used EBCDIC (good, or bad depending upon how you looked at it). The Sigma 9 even has an instruction called edit byte string which is almost a 'printf' in an instruction. > 3) Was this a 32-bit machine? Yes, the registers had 32 bits. If operands were 64 bits, you used register pairs. Halfwords (16 bits) were automatically sign extended when loaded into registers. Bytes were treated as unsigned things and the upper 24 bits were set to zero when loaded into registers. > 4) What high level languages were available for these machines? Several languages were available, most commonly used was Fortran (looking at the listing of the compiler was an experience in itself :-) In addition, there was an Algol-68 compiler, APL, At least 3 assemblers (most subsets of the largest one), and some utilities like pip (it was called PCL). > 5) What operating system was used and how does it compare to > current systems such as Unix? Two main operating systems existed (CP-R, and CP-5) The first (CP-R) was a smaller real-time monitor that could be used for process control and the like. The larger one (CP-5) was a really neat operating system, it could do almost everything, batch, timesharing, real-time, transaction processing, and remote-batch processing (thus the '5'). One of its later features was the addition (this was back in 1973/4) of a second processor to take over some of the load. I was told that the addition of the second processor code was very minimal (1000 lines is a number that sticks to mind). > 6) What technology was used in the hardware? (IC's, transistors, > tubes, TTL, RTL, etc.) The original design dates back to 1965 (early Sigma machines (Sigma 2, 5, and 7) and used 4 volt DTL logic. To get the speed, outputs were pulled up to 8 volts and clamped at 4. Most of the logic cards were integretated output stages with descrete diode input trees. > 7) Any interesting stories related to these machines? The Robin-Hood/Friar Tuck story comes to mind, discussed here earlier. > 8) Does anyone still use these machines, or clones of them? I think some people still do, but I'm not sure. The division of Xerox was sold (given away, take your pick) to Honeywell back in the 1975 time frame. It was a shame, nice company to do business with. As for clone makers, a company called Telefile (which started out making compatable add-on hardware) had a clone operational, its success is unknown to me. > 9) Where would one go to find hardware manuals or even junked > machines of this family? I still have a Sigma 5 CPU manual (that's the machine I worked on) and remember it well. > >According to Steven Levy in the book _Hackers_, Peter Deutsch >did an operating system for the XDS940 that Community Memory used >in San Francisco in the 70's. This machine was used as a means >of communication, for people with like ideas or things to sell. >Are you still out there, Mr. Deutsch? I remember seeing some >postings on the net from you. Maybe you can take time to fill >in the details of the XDS940. Yes, real old times, the SDS 940 (they were not sold after Xerox took over as far as I know). Tymshare used a whole bunch of these. At one time they had a whole bunch on a computer floor in Cupertino (over 20?). Dial in ports came in from all over the country, and the networking was the beginning of Tymnet. The 940 had two arithmetic registers, one index register (24 bits here), and 32k words of user CORE. It was a modification of the SDS930 and the start of the modification was done at Berkeley (UCB) in the early 1960's. The basic construction of this machine was descrete transistor logic (2nd generation machine). Both machines very interesting... ----- Just somebody in Sillycon Valley. No, I don't play golf, or run a big blue company.
gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) (06/08/91)
The XDS was not *that* great a machine. When Xerox PARC was starting up, they asked the Xerox bigwigs to buy them a DEC-10. Corporate Xerox balked at the idea, and offered them an XDS machine. The PARC researchers told them "no thank you, we don't need it after all." They went back to the lab and built a DEC-10 from scratch using TTL parts available at the time. This was the genesis of CPU development at Xerox. Legend has it the mutant PDP-10 was faster than DEC's best model. Trivia Question: What was this DEC-10 named? Don Gillies | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign gillies@cs.uiuc.edu | Digital Computer Lab, 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana IL --
dbrooks@osf.org (David Brooks) (06/11/91)
In article <13933@goofy.Apple.COM>, johana!tsw@apple.com (Tom Watson) writes: |> (excellent reminiscence of the SDS/XDS Sigmas) I was working on a hospital administration joint project for four hospitals in England in the early 70's; we chose Sigmas largely on the basis of the availability of a full Codasyl database and entirely credible plans for a transaction processing system. Two of us went to El Segundo and basically sat on their desks until they produced the latter. I ended up a XDS (actually RXDS) employee, starting 22 days before Xerox pulled the plug. This was a genuine surprise; the Xerox board made the decision at 4pm in New york, and I woke up to read about it in the morning paper the next day. |> The machine has 16 general registers, registers 1-7 were used as index |> registers. Instructions addressed bytes, halfwords (16 bits), words (32 |> bits), and doublewords (64 bits). Included stack instructions that used a |> stack descriptor (multiple stacks). But memory was basically word-addressed. |> The instruction set was fairly complete, it was meant to compete with the |> IBM 360 series, and even used EBCDIC (good, or bad depending upon how you |> looked at it). The Sigma 9 even has an instruction called edit byte |> string which is almost a 'printf' in an instruction. The block-mode terminal driver had exactly one comment in it: * The following instruction checks parity. How it does so is left as an * exercise to the reader. EBS 0 |> Several languages were available, most commonly used was Fortran (looking |> at the listing of the compiler was an experience in itself :-) In |> addition, there was an Algol-68 compiler, APL, At least 3 assemblers (most |> subsets of the largest one), You left out the BCPL port I did :-). Additionally, we did all of the DBMS/TP application programming in COBOL. Stop snickering, you at the back. |> > 5) What operating system was used and how does it compare to |> > current systems such as Unix? |> Two main operating systems existed (CP-R, and CP-5) If only. The line suffered from a plethora of operating systems. At one time there were five active: CP-R, BPM (batch processing monitor), BTM (basic timesharing?) UTS (timesharing plus) and XOS (the prototype TP system). Fortunately all the functionality was rolled into CP-V (not CP-5) as Tom described. For a while, I gather there was a move to standardize on CP-V for Honeywell mainframes after H took over. I know most of the later OS's supported shared pure procedures (only one copy of certain utilities in memory), but I'm vague on whether it handled shared libraries. But operating system overlays (thirteen?) were a thing of joy, if you liked kernel debugging. Near the end, the Sigma machines were replaced by the compatible 5x0 line: the 3-6 by 560 and the 7-9 by 590. Selling the things outside the U.S. had its own special challenges. Rather than build a 50Hz version, Xerox made its customers buy a 120V/60Hz generator and install it in the basement. Also (I may have mentioned this before), the 560 was rated by the British Government at 1.05 Atlas-power (a measure of processor performance based entirely on an obsolete machine, analogous to VAX-MIPS). Unfortunately, 1.0 Atlas was the dividing point between an expensive and time-consuming procurement process, and a more straightforward equipment purchase. So the engineers in England drove the clock down a little bit, to 0.98 Atlas, and we proudly announced the 560 Model II, *the* machine for Government departments. Field-upgradable, of course, preferably at night. -- David Brooks dbrooks@osf.org Systems Engineering, OSF uunet!osf.org!dbrooks
alderson@Alderson.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) (06/11/91)
In article <1991Jun8.085847.7980@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, gillies@m.cs (Don Gillies) writes: >The XDS was not *that* great a machine. When Xerox PARC was starting >up, they asked the Xerox bigwigs to buy them a DEC-10. Corporate >Xerox balked at the idea, and offered them an XDS machine. The PARC >researchers told them "no thank you, we don't need it after all." >They went back to the lab and built a DEC-10 from scratch using TTL >parts available at the time. This was the genesis of CPU development >at Xerox. > >Legend has it the mutant PDP-10 was faster than DEC's best model. > >Trivia Question: What was this DEC-10 named? Is this the origin of the Foonly? -- Rich Alderson 'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take Tops-20 Mgr. such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.' AIR, Stanford --J. R. R. Tolkien, alderson@alderson.stanford.edu _The Lost Road_
jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith) (06/11/91)
In article <13933@goofy.Apple.COM> johana!tsw@apple.com (Tom Watson) writes: >Yes, real old times, the SDS 940 (they were not sold after Xerox took over >as far as I know). Tymshare used a whole bunch of these. At one time >they had a whole bunch on a computer floor in Cupertino (over 20?). Dial >in ports came in from all over the country, and the networking was the >beginning of Tymnet. At one time, TYMNET hosts 1 through 21 were all 940's. (Hosts 22-39 were PDP-10's, and hosts 40-48 were IBM-370's.) In 1986, all the 940's were shut down as Tymshare (at that point called "McDonnel Douglas Network Systems Company) moved their main Data Center from Cupertino to Fremont. We had been using host 8 as the master for periodic jobs, so when it shut down, we had to implement 'cron' and 'SUBMIT' for the PDP-10's. Some of the system utilities are written in a compiled language called "SIMPLE". The compiler ran on both the 24-bit and 36-bit machines. Anyone else work with SIMPLE? -- Joe Smith (408)922-6220 | SMTP: jms@tardis.tymnet.com or jms@gemini.tymnet.com BT Tymnet Tech Services | UUCP: ...!{ames,pyramid}!oliveb!tymix!tardis!jms PO Box 49019, MS-C51 | BIX: smithjoe | CA license plate: "POPJ P," (PDP-10) San Jose, CA 95161-9019 | humorous disclaimer: "My Amiga 3000 speaks for me."
gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) (06/12/91)
alderson@Alderson.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes: > >gillies@cs.uiuc.EDU (Don Gillies) writes: >> (a whole bunch of stuff about Xerox's handbuilt DEC-10, named "MAXC") >Is this the origin of the Foonly? No, in the early 1980's when DEC announced it was halting production and enhancement of the DECsystem10 and DECsystem20 series (i.e. cancelling the "Venus" project), many universities were upset and claimed they could not live without new DEC-10 series computers. Perhaps "Foonly" was the name of one of the companies organized in an attempt to build more DEC-10 - type machines. Don Gillies - gillies@cs.uiuc.edu - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign --
mrc@milton.u.washington.edu (Mark Crispin) (06/12/91)
In article <1991Jun11.231151.16752@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) writes: >No, in the early 1980's when DEC announced it was halting production >and enhancement of the DECsystem10 and DECsystem20 series (i.e. >cancelling the "Venus" project), many universities were upset and >claimed they could not live without new DEC-10 series computers. >Perhaps "Foonly" was the name of one of the companies organized in an >attempt to build more DEC-10 - type machines. Most of the above is wrong. Foonly grew out of the "Super Foonly" project at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the early 1970's. When this project was cancelled by the funding authorities, many of its people went to DEC, the result being the PDP-10 model KL10 in 1974/5. Dave Poole created his own company, Foonly, and built one Super-Foonly (the F1) which was installed at III. Poole also built several smaller KS10 class machines which ran Tenex, in the 1970's and early 1980's: the F2, F3, and F4. These machines were hand-built and required competant site personnel to maintain them, something that often did not exist. The cancelled (1983) project to build a follow-on to the KL10 at DEC was the Jupiter. The Venus is better known as the VAX 8600.
vancleef@iastate.edu (Van Cleef Henry H) (06/12/91)
In article <1991Jun11.231151.16752@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) writes: >cancelling the "Venus" project), many universities were upset and >claimed they could not live without new DEC-10 series computers. >Perhaps "Foonly" was the name of one of the companies organized in an >attempt to build more DEC-10 - type machines. > >-- > > > The Venus project was not cancelled. You are thinking of Jupiter, which was the same technology applied to the PDP-10. Venus completed successfully as the 8600 and 8650 products. -- Hank van Cleef vancleef@iastate.edu Iowa State University, Ames. Ia. tmn!vancleef The Union Institute, Cincinnati, Oh.
rmb@omews34.intel.com (Bob Bentley) (06/12/91)
In article <1991Jun5.231450.25856@digi.lonestar.org> crichmon@digi.lonestar.org (Charles Richmond) writes: >A friend of mine in college told me about the Sigma 9 computer >that he used at his previous university. He said it was great >for interactive use. I believe that the computer was designed >by Scientific Data Systems (SDS). Later this company sold >out to Xerox and became Xerox Data Systems (XDS). I would >like to know more about the hardware and software of the Sigma 9 >and perhaps its sibling, the Sigma 7. > There's a fairly good description of the XDS-940 in "Timesharing Systems Design Concepts" by Richard W. Watson, published in 1970 by McGraw-Hill. Quoting from the blurb on the cover flap: "Special features include: the detailed coverage of principal aspects of operating system design; the use of examples from two computer systems, XDS-940 and GE-645 Multics, for the bulk of its illustrations; and a cogent discussion of the difficult, and often misunderstood, concept of segmentation." An oldy but a goody! Bob Bentley Intel Corp., M/S JF1-58 E-mail: rmb@ichips.intel.com 5200 N.E. Elam Young Parkway Phone: (503) 696-4728 Hillsboro, Oregon 97124 Fax: (503) 696-4515
jgd@convex.csd.uwm.edu (John G Dobnick) (06/12/91)
Re: the SDS Sigma 9 > |> The machine has 16 general registers, registers 1-7 were used as index > |> registers. Instructions addressed bytes, halfwords (16 bits), words (32 > |> bits), and doublewords (64 bits). Included stack instructions that used a > |> stack descriptor (multiple stacks). Reaching back into infrequently accessed memory recesses [rummage, rummage...] I seem to recall on feature of this machine (or perhaps the Sigma 7) that has not been mentioned. The machine had multiple *sets* of general registers. When a context switch occurred, the _register set_ was switched. (Interrupts count as a context switch, of course.) No saving/restoring registers -- just "window in" another register set. If memory serves, the basic machine came with two sets -- one "supervisor set", and one "user set". Additional "user sets" could be added, up to, I think, 15 or 31 user sets. This certainly beats the IBM model -- with its constant LM/STM activity. [Of current general purpose machines, how many use multiple register sets? Unisys 1100/2200 (formerly Univac and Sperry) systems do -- two sets, one OS only, and one for everything else. Any others?] -- John G Dobnick (JGD2) Computing Services Division @ University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee INTERNET: jgd@uwm.edu ATTnet: (414) 229-5727 UUCP: uunet!uwm!jgd "Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight." -- William Safire
abaum (Allen Baum) (06/12/91)
In article <1991Jun10.235301.2946@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@Alderson.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes: >In article <1991Jun8.085847.7980@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, gillies@m.cs (Don Gillies) writes: >>Xerox balked at the idea... went back to the lab and built a DEC-10 >>... This was the genesis of CPU development at Xerox. > >Is this the origin of the Foonly? No. Foonly grew out of a project at Stanford AI Labs circa 1970 (called Super-Foonly, for reasons that I don't remember) to build a PDP-10 that was 10x faster than the current KA-10. It was supported by ARPA, and by some extent, DEC. ARPA cancelled the project after a year or two (I'm not sure exactly how long the project lasted, but as I recall the reason for cancellation was not meeting schedules). DEC took the plans/ideas (and the CAD system developed for it and the person who wrote the CAD system) and came out with the KL-10 processor a few years later. The CAD system developed for it was, as far as I know, the original schematic capture system, and the genesis of both VALID and CASE Technologies. It was more powerful than ANY that have been produced since then, IMHO. So, having made that outrageous statement, does anyone know of an CAD systems in used earlier? ****************************** Allen J. Baum baum@apple.com
gingell@opus.Eng.Sun.COM (Rob Gingell) (06/12/91)
In article <1991Jun8.085847.7980@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) writes: >The XDS was not *that* great a machine. When Xerox PARC was starting >up, they asked the Xerox bigwigs to buy them a DEC-10. Corporate >Xerox balked at the idea, and offered them an XDS machine. The PARC >researchers told them "no thank you, we don't need it after all." >They went back to the lab and built a DEC-10 from scratch using TTL >parts available at the time. This was the genesis of CPU development >at Xerox. > >Legend has it the mutant PDP-10 was faster than DEC's best model. I also seem to recall that it was certainly faster than the PDP-10's at the time, but don't remember whether it exceeded the speeds of the last PDP-10's or not. >Trivia Question: What was this DEC-10 named? MAXC. If I remember correctly, MAXC was this heavily microcoded machine that was a PDP-10 most of the time, but could be other things too. It was actually set up to be a PDP-10 with a BBN paging box, and ran TENEX -- perhaps the last site outside of BBN (and maybe SRI) to do so.
rodman@sgi.com (Paul K. Rodman) (06/13/91)
In article <1991Jun11.231151.16752@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) writes: >No, in the early 1980's when DEC announced it was halting production >and enhancement of the DECsystem10 and DECsystem20 series (i.e. >cancelling the "Venus" project), ^^^^^ Error. I belive Venus == Vax8600 You mean the Jupiter project. -- Paul K. Rodman Advanced Systems Division rodman@sgi.com Silicon Graphics, Inc. KA1ZA Mountain View, Ca.
miklg@sono.uucp (Michael Goldman ) (06/13/91)
I worked for Comshare in the 78-79 and they were still using Xerox Sigma 9s
They had a friendly timesharing OS with one of the earliest relational
databases. Even then, they had a hard time getting parts. They had a dedi-
cated group of engineers scrounging the world for spare parts. They
would get enough of them and build a new machine. Their OS
could handle multi-CPUs but Amdahl's law prevailed and they never
used more than 3 or four together. They were actually going to make a
new OS for it when they changed their mind and bought an IBM timesharing co.
(I mean the co. used IBM mainframes).
Then I went to work for MDSI (also in Ann Arbor) which had a very lucrative
machine tool language they ran timesharing for customers on 940s (the
founders had spun off from Comshare). They had optimized the hell out of
that assembly language program. They rented time on 940s from Tymshare
in Sunnyvale,
Comshare in Ann Arbor, and a French company in central France. The little
things supported an unusually large number of customers for such an antique
machine. They had some DEC-10s they ran for development. They had changed
the microcode on the DEC-10s so it would run 940 assembly code !! (Top THAT
you hackers !). They had evaluated switching their timesharing customers to
similarly altered DEC-10s but they mis-read the data I gave them on performance
and wrongly concluded that it wsn't cost-effective. The point became moot
when the '81-82 recession wiped out the machine tool industry in the US, and
MDSI came out with an upgrade with mind-boggling productivity improvements
for the machine tool industry which ran on a VAX (Pascal this time - they'd
learned their lesson.)
Then I moved to California.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Michael Goldman. "Never test for an error condition
you don't know how to handle."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith) (06/15/91)
In article <1991Jun11.231151.16752@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) writes: >"Venus"), many universities were upset and claimed they could not live without >new DEC-10 series computers. Perhaps "Foonly" was the name of one of the >companies organized in an attempt to build more DEC-10 - type machines. No. The Foonly existed BEFORE the KL-10 went into production. This was long before the "Jupiter" cancellation. (Anyone from SAIL want to expand on this?) With all this talk of PDP-10 compatibles, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Systems Concepts and their SC-30M. (I've heard that Compuserve replaced all of their DEC CPUs with SC-30M's.) -- Joe Smith (408)922-6220 | SMTP: jms@tardis.tymnet.com or jms@gemini.tymnet.com BT Tymnet Tech Services | UUCP: ...!{ames,pyramid}!oliveb!tymix!tardis!jms PO Box 49019, MS-C51 | BIX: smithjoe | CA license plate: "POPJ P," (PDP-10) San Jose, CA 95161-9019 | humorous disclaimer: "My Amiga 3000 speaks for me."
jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith) (06/15/91)
In article <1991Jun12.180535.19518@sono.uucp> miklg@sono.uucp (Michael Goldman ) writes: >machine. They had some DEC-10s they ran for development. They had changed >the microcode on the DEC-10s so it would run 940 assembly code !! (Top THAT >you hackers !). No. Tymshare went out of their way to make TYMCOM-X on the 10 look like TYMCOM-IX on the 940. It has the same prompts, the programs work the same, and programs written in SIMPL, TYMBASIC, or SUPERFORTRAN could be compiled on both the 10's and the 940's with no source changes. The rumor about PDP-10s running 940 binaries is just folklore. Note the use of present tense in the second sentence above. Many of the people in BT Tymnet use the TYMCOM-IX mode to this day. -- Joe Smith (408)922-6220 | SMTP: jms@tardis.tymnet.com or jms@gemini.tymnet.com BT Tymnet Tech Services | UUCP: ...!{ames,pyramid}!oliveb!tymix!tardis!jms PO Box 49019, MS-C51 | BIX: smithjoe | CA license plate: "POPJ P," (PDP-10) San Jose, CA 95161-9019 | humorous disclaimer: "My Amiga 3000 speaks for me."
herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (06/18/91)
In article <1915@tardis.Tymnet.COM>, jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith) writes: > In article <13933@goofy.Apple.COM> johana!tsw@apple.com (Tom Watson) writes: >>Yes, real old times, the SDS 940 (they were not sold after Xerox took over >>as far as I know). Tymshare used a whole bunch of these. At one time >>they had a whole bunch on a computer floor in Cupertino (over 20?). Dial >>in ports came in from all over the country, and the networking was the >>beginning of Tymnet. > > At one time, TYMNET hosts 1 through 21 were all 940's. (Hosts 22-39 were > PDP-10's, and hosts 40-48 were IBM-370's.) In 1986, all the 940's were > shut down as Tymshare (at that point called "McDonnel Douglas Network > Systems Company) moved their main Data Center from Cupertino to Fremont. I spent five years with a company in Ann Arbor that bought a tremendous number of TRUs (Tymshare Resource Units) and sold a larger number of CRUs. The interactive product was written in 940 assembly language. Rumour had it that at one time they had written a program and removed the comments from all the sources for security reasons. When a customer's usage got so high he didn't want to pay timesharing fees, we would let him run it on his IBM mainframe. There was a 940 simulator that ran the same code on the IBM as ran on the 940s. There was a limited supply of 940s and we needed them for customers, so the man who wrote the IBM simulator wrote microcode to add one instruction to a Tymshare PDP-10 - be a 940 until you run into something you can't handle. Development moved to the ten. I wonder if timesharing customers are still running on emulated 940s on PDP-10s. They were always working on the advanced version written in Pascal. dan herrick
herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (06/18/91)
In article <1991Jun12.180535.19518@sono.uucp>, miklg@sono.uucp (Michael Goldman ) writes: > > Then I went to work for MDSI (also in Ann Arbor) which had a very lucrative > machine tool language they ran timesharing for customers on 940s (the > founders had spun off from Comshare). They had optimized the hell out of > that assembly language program. They rented time on 940s from Tymshare > in Sunnyvale, [...] > They had some DEC-10s they ran for development. They had changed > the microcode on the DEC-10s so it would run 940 assembly code !! (Top THAT > you hackers !). Ok, if we're naming names, I think the detail should be right on this. They decided to microcode the ten, and They paid for it, but Richard Wagman did it. Dick's approach to PDP-10 macro was to define a set of macroes that let him write 370 opcodes and syntax and get PDP-10 assemblies. I used a piece of his 370 code to do a little bit more than he needed to, once. Interesting. dan herrick
alderson@Alderson.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) (06/18/91)
In article <1935@tardis.Tymnet.COM>, jms@tardis (Joe Smith) writes: >In article <1991Jun11.231151.16752@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) writes: > >>"Venus"), many universities were upset and claimed they could not live without >>new DEC-10 series computers. Perhaps "Foonly" was the name of one of the >>companies organized in an attempt to build more DEC-10 - type machines. > >No. The Foonly existed BEFORE the KL-10 went into production. This >was long before the "Jupiter" cancellation. (Anyone from SAIL want to >expand on this?) > >With all this talk of PDP-10 compatibles, I'm surprised that no one >has mentioned Systems Concepts and their SC-30M. (I've heard that >Compuserve replaced all of their DEC CPUs with SC-30M's.) SC-25's. The little uniprocessor boxes. -- Rich Alderson 'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take Tops-20 Mgr. such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.' AIR, Stanford --J. R. R. Tolkien, alderson@alderson.stanford.edu _The Lost Road_
miklg@sono.uucp (Michael Goldman ) (06/18/91)
jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith) writes: >In article <1991Jun12.180535.19518@sono.uucp> miklg@sono.uucp (Michael Goldman ) writes: >>machine. They had some DEC-10s they ran for development. They had changed >>the microcode on the DEC-10s so it would run 940 assembly code !! (Top THAT >>you hackers !). >No. Tymshare went out of their way to make TYMCOM-X on the 10 look like >TYMCOM-IX on the 940. It has the same prompts, the programs work the >same, and programs written in SIMPL, TYMBASIC, or SUPERFORTRAN could >be compiled on both the 10's and the 940's with no source changes. >The rumor about PDP-10s running 940 binaries is just folklore. MDSI used ADP DEC-10s for development. The product was written in 940 assembly language so the prompts and all were not the issue. The company had tuned the product endlessly over the 12 years and had a lot of old programmers who were independently wealthy from the early stock gifts and didn't mind spending all day figuring some way to save a single CPU cycle. It was a very math-intensive which was why the effort to tune it. I was friends with the guy who redid the DEC microcode. Nice guy, liked classical music, a little free-spirited for the company. When things started turning down, he went to DEC to work on their DEC-10 enhancement before it was cancelled. Just because *you* didn't see it doesn't make it folklore. MDSI only used 1 Tymshare DEC-10 for their compiler group. They got it free in return for MDSI's Pascal compiler. MDSI wrote the compiler because they couldn't find one they liked. It was a very good compiler and we often said it would make a good product, but higher-ups didn't want the hassles of marketing a totally unrelated product. Michael Goldman
miklg@sono.uucp (Michael Goldman ) (06/19/91)
herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com writes: >Ok, if we're naming names, I think the detail should be right on this. >They decided to microcode the ten, and They paid for it, but Richard >Wagman did it. Dick's approach to PDP-10 macro was to define a set >of macroes that let him write 370 opcodes and syntax and get PDP-10 >assemblies. I used a piece of his 370 code to do a little bit more >than he needed to, once. Interesting. >dan herrick Thanks for the detail. I was peripheral to all that so I missed much of the details. I was engaged in a benchmarking study which showed that a DEC-10 running 940 code could handle about 5 times the load of a 940. Since a DEC-10 cost only about 4+ times the 940, we thought we had something but, MDSI had been selling microcomputers to their timesharing base so 940 usage started declining about then (1981) and then the recession just wiped it out. The thing that really obviated it was the new software they (finally!) got on the VAX. The customers who saw it were falling all over themselves to get it. It was the CAD equivalent of going to "point-and-click" after using BASIC on a TTY. As I mentioned in another posting, Dick went to DEC to work on the follow-up DEC-10 just before I left. BTW, I still see the names of some of my former supervisors from MDSI, they seem to still be in Ann Arbor. One was in "Business Week" as the Pres. of an interesting start-up. Regards, Michael Goldman