Where did they go?
Skip Egdorf
maintained. How about a similar list posted and maintained here for
the different Multics sites? Where was Multics installed and what
happened to each site. For example, what happened to the three USGS
machines on which I worked? I believe that they were three of the
first 6880s sold by Honywell; sn 7, 8, and 9 or something like that;
installed at USGS in McLean VA, Denver CO, and Meno Park CA (I seem to
remember...)
Where were the sites? What were there configurations? When did they run?
Where did they go?
Skip Egdorf
h...@lanl.gov
Greg Baryza
Well, I was chairman of the HLSUA (Honeywell Large System User Association)
Multics division around the end of the 70's. I remember the following
sites:
Ford Motor Company (Dearborn MI USA)
General Motors (Warren MI USA)
Rome Air Development Center (RADC, Grifiss AFB, Rome NY USA))
SWURCC (S'Western Univerty Regional Computer Centre @ Bristol/Bath U.K.)
INRIA (sorry, I don't know the full name @ somewhere in France)
U. Grenoble (France)
USGS (U.S. Geological Survey @ Reston VA., Denver CO. and Menlo Park CA
USA)
U. Calgary (ALTA Canada)
Industrial Nucleonic (Columbus OH USA)
Dept of National Defence (Ship Repair Unit, Halifax NS, Canada)
Air Force Data Service Center (Pentagon, Washing DC USA)
National Security Agency (McLean VA USA)
MIT (of course, Center of the Multics Universe)
There were also Honeywell internal sites at Cambridge MA, Phoenix AZ,
Minneapolis MN, and Billerica MA, all in the USA.
I'm sure I missed several more. I think there might have been one in
Germany, one in Ireland (Queen's University?) and one more in the U.K.
(London?).
--Greg Baryza |"And here I sit so patiently,
--bar...@vos.stratus.com | Waiting to find out what price
--------------------------| You have to pay to get out of
#include <std_disclaimer> | Going through all these things twice."
| Bob Dylan
Tom Van Vleck
> Ford Motor Company (Dearborn MI USA)
> General Motors (Warren MI USA)
> Rome Air Development Center (RADC, Grifiss AFB, Rome NY USA))
> SWURCC (S'Western Univerty Regional Computer Centre @ Bristol/Bath U.K.)
> INRIA (sorry, I don't know the full name @ somewhere in France)
> U. Grenoble (France)
> USGS (U.S. Geological Survey @ Reston VA., Denver CO. and Menlo Park CA
> USA)
> U. Calgary (ALTA Canada)
> Industrial Nucleonic (Columbus OH USA)
> Dept of National Defence (Ship Repair Unit, Halifax NS, Canada)
> Air Force Data Service Center (Pentagon, Washing DC USA)
> National Security Agency (McLean VA USA)
> MIT (of course, Center of the Multics Universe)
I also remember
Puerto Rican Highway Authority
Data Communications Corp, Menphis TN
University of Southwestern Lousiana, Lafayette LA
Avon University, England
Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg VA
CCVR (what was this?)
ASEA, Sweden
Bell Canada, Toronto
University of Oakland, Detroit, MI
In addition there were Multices installed in Paris and Tokyo
in the early 70s that wren't on the list of regular sites.
Tom Knight
Hi Tom!
Rainer Schoepf
Well, I was chairman of the HLSUA (Honeywell Large System User Association)
Multics division around the end of the 70's. I remember the following
sites:
Ford Motor Company (Dearborn MI USA)
General Motors (Warren MI USA)
Rome Air Development Center (RADC, Grifiss AFB, Rome NY USA))
SWURCC (S'Western Univerty Regional Computer Centre @ Bristol/Bath U.K.)
INRIA (sorry, I don't know the full name @ somewhere in France)
U. Grenoble (France)
USGS (U.S. Geological Survey @ Reston VA., Denver CO. and Menlo Park CA
USA)
U. Calgary (ALTA Canada)
Industrial Nucleonic (Columbus OH USA)
Dept of National Defence (Ship Repair Unit, Halifax NS, Canada)
Air Force Data Service Center (Pentagon, Washing DC USA)
National Security Agency (McLean VA USA)
MIT (of course, Center of the Multics Universe)
There were also Honeywell internal sites at Cambridge MA, Phoenix AZ,
Minneapolis MN, and Billerica MA, all in the USA.
I'm sure I missed several more. I think there might have been one in
Germany, one in Ireland (Queen's University?) and one more in the U.K.
(London?).
There was one at the University of Mainz, Germany, installed 1984 and
dismounted two years ago or so. I was just finishing my thesis when it
replaced the old GCOS system. That was when my real education started. :-)
--
Rainer Schoepf
Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum
fuer Informationstechnik Berlin
Heilbronner Strasse 10
W-1000 Berlin 31
Federal Republic of Germany
<Sch...@sc.ZIB-Berlin.de> or <Sch...@sc.ZIB-Berlin.dbp.de>
Julien Maisonneuve
I think the first was INRIA. The machine was stopped and removed 1 year ago. It
was badly hurt: disks broken, whole cabinets were empty or unused... This machine
was very heavily used as the institute's main computer. A VAX 11/785 came at the
same time and lasted longer (stopped 6 months ago). The multics was replaced by a
Pyramid.
A number of universities computing centers had Multics machine. I spent two years
on one of them. They were all connected to bitnet (mine was FRCIRP71, others
FRCICB71...). They were bought as a result of a national computing plan.
The Multics machines were stopped early, as soon as Bull said maintenance would
be stopped, that is around september 1988. But many french students had contacts
with Multics.
The same national plan replaced them with CDC machines running NOS/VE !!!
Horrible. The machine were chosen by fortran people, and system people never got
to use them. A lot of sun were bought since then...
The CDC is unused, french universities own 16 of them...
--
_________ Julien.Ma...@inria.fr jul...@sor.inria.fr
/ _ _ _ ...!uunet!inria!corto!julien
/ /) ' ) ) ) INRIA : 33 (1) 39 63 52 08
__/_ // o _ __ / / / _ o _ _ __ __ _ _ _
/ / (_(_(/_(_(<_/) ) / ' (_(_(_(_/_)_(_)_/) )_/) )_(<_(_(_( \_)-(<_
(_/
R. Barry Walker
>Multics division around the end of the 70's. I remember the following
>sites:
>
>
>Dept of National Defence (Ship Repair Unit, Halifax NS, Canada)
>
NS), since the ship repair unit was just a user of the system. I'd have
to kill you if I told you the real use. :-)
Also, there were Multices at:
Dept of National Defence (Ottawa, Ont - Document Publishing Services)
and at Bell Canada in Toronto and Montreal.
>I'm sure I missed several more. I think there might have been one in
>Germany, one in Ireland (Queen's University?) and one more in the U.K.
>(London?).
>
>
>--Greg Baryza |"And here I sit so patiently,
>--bar...@vos.stratus.com | Waiting to find out what price
>--------------------------| You have to pay to get out of
>#include <std_disclaimer> | Going through all these things twice."
> | Bob Dylan
--
R Barry Walker Phone: (613) 996-3483
Dept National Defence AUTOVON: 846-3483
MGen George Pearkes Bldg FAX: (613) 996-6277
Ottawa, Canada K1A 0K2 DREnet: rbwa...@ncs.dnd.ca
John Ata
>(Skip Egdorf) wrote:
>>
>> The list of Multics contributers is interesting and should be
>> maintained. How about a similar list posted and maintained here for
>
>Rome Air Development Center (RADC, Grifiss AFB, Rome NY USA))
Having been associated many years with what was then RADC (it is
now called Rome Labs or RL) I can tell you what happened to that
site. RADC was, after MIT, one of the first experimenters of a
Multics system on the GE-645 around 1972. The decision was made
to replace Multics and it's database managers (MRDS and Janus)
with a VAX and Oracle in 1988, the plug was pulled from the
Multics site there in October of 1989 (26.0.0.18 was no more).
What I found ironic was that some of the functionality was
transferred to a DEC TOPS-20 machine (talk about a dead
machine)... Another note of interest was that although VAX/Oracle
originally did horribly on the benchmark tests, the site (for the
purposes of the benchmark) placed their database in a RAM disk
(never mind that it wouldn't operationally be configured in this
way). The better performance was then used as a justification for
the "enhancement" to their database system. Of course, their
motiviation was understandable, but really...
>--Greg Baryza |"And here I sit so patiently,
--
John G. Ata - Technical Consultant | Internet: a...@hfsi.com
HFS, Inc. VA20 | UUCP: uunet!hfsi!ata
7900 Westpark Drive MS:601 | Voice: (703) 827-6810
McLean, VA 22102 | FAX: (703) 827-3729
Paul Amaranth
>University of Oakland, Detroit, MI
Well, close. It was (and is) Oakland University and we're really in
Rochester, MI.
(Greg: How could you forget us? :-)
--
Paul Amaranth Manager User Services - office: (313) 370 4541 (also voicemail)
(internet) amar...@vela.acs.oakland.edu | This space
(bitnet) amaranth@oakland | temporarily
(uucp) ...!uunet!umich!vela!amaranth | empty
Dominik Kubla
"> "I'm sure I missed several more. I think there might have been one in
"> "Germany, one in Ireland (Queen's University?) and one more in the U.K.
^^^^^^^^
You are right! Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, got one!
But that was when i started my studies and so i never had the opportunity
to work on that system. If you want to know more about it then try to
contact: ull...@mzdmza.zdv.uni-mainz.de
"> "--Greg Baryza |"And here I sit so patiently,
"> "--bar...@vos.stratus.com | Waiting to find out what price
"> "--------------------------| You have to pay to get out of
"> "#include <std_disclaimer> | Going through all these things twice."
"> " | Bob Dylan
Dominik
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| eMail: ku...@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de / ku...@mzdmza.zdv.uni-mainz.de |
| sMail: Dominik Kubla, Steinsberg 34, 5428 Nast"atten, Germany |
| sMail from July 1st, 1993: |
| Dominik Kubla, Steinsberg 34, 56355 Nast"atten, Germany |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| "Linux: The choice of a GNU generation" --S. Frampton |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Greg Baryza
(Paul Amaranth) wrote:
>
> (Greg: How could you forget us? :-)
Well, actually, it was easy. Advancing senility and not enough thought
will do it every time. Actually, I was surprised at both the number I
remembered AND the number I'd forgotten. My apologies to OU and to all the
others I omitted from my original list.
Reed Little
i remember reading somewhere that three Multics machines were installed in the
basement of the White House. my memory is fuzzy but they might of had
something to do with FEMA. anybody know anything about this?
========================================================================
reed little
software engineering institute - carnegie mellon university
lit...@sei.cmu.edu, +1.412.268.5792
C. D. Tavares
> i remember reading somewhere that three Multics machines were installed in the
> basement of the White House. my memory is fuzzy but they might of had
> something to do with FEMA. anybody know anything about this?
You may be remembering the large effort Honeywell put out to win an office
automation system contract at the Executive Office of the President. I
don't remember if someone else won it, or whether the bid itself died,
or whether Honeywell switched bids to GCOS, but no Multices ever ended up
there.
--
c...@rocket.sw.stratus.com --If you believe that I speak for my company,
OR c...@vos.stratus.com write today for my special Investors' Packet...
Tom Van Vleck
> In article <1993May5.1...@sei.cmu.edu>, lit...@sei.cmu.edu (Reed Little) writes:
> > i remember reading somewhere that three Multics machines were installed in
> > the basement of the White House. my memory is fuzzy but they might of had
> > something to do with FEMA. anybody know anything about this?
> You may be remembering the large effort Honeywell put out to win an office
> automation system contract at the Executive Office of the President. I
> don't remember if someone else won it, or whether the bid itself died,
> or whether Honeywell switched bids to GCOS, but no Multices ever ended up
> there.
I met the person who decided against Multics.. I interviewed at Stanford
Research LIbraries Group years back & the director of RLG used to work
in the Carter White house. He was the person who decided to
install a PROFS system (remember Oliver North?) instead of Multics.
They could have retrieved old copies of .mbx files from Multics incremental
dump tapes just as easily as from the PROFS database, I remember thinking
during the Iran-Contra investigations.
Paul Smee
>The list of Multics contributers is interesting and should be
>maintained. How about a similar list posted and maintained here for
>the different Multics sites? Where was Multics installed and what
>happened to each site.
Well, the Universities of Bristol and of Bath clubbed together back
around 1979 and bought one, the first sold on this side of the
Atlantic. They created a pseudo-organisation, AUCC ('Avon Universities
Computer Centre') to run it, and I joined AUCC from HIS/CISL in 1980.
(Having tried unsuccessfully to get HIS to send me over here on a US
salary, since there wasn't anyone over here who knew anything about
Multics at the time.)
In those days, UK University mainframes were bought by the government
(in essence) and replaced on a strict schedule, and so our Multics was
replaced by an IBM 3090 running VM/CMS in about 1987-88. (I use the
term 'replaced' VERY loosely. :-)
HIS sold several other Multices in the UK: one to the 'Royal Aircraft
Establishment', an R&D part of the Ministry of Defense; and the rest to
various British Universities -- Cardiff, Birmingham, Loughborough,
Brunel. Far as I know, they've all gone now. (And, I can't escape a
feeling that I've forgotten someone.) Ours was a Level 68/M -- I have
a feeling that all the others were DPS-8Ms, but we were a bit early
for those.
University of Edinburgh did a pretty nice O/S named EMAS, running on
ICL boxes, which was fairly heavily modelled on Multics. Unfortunately,
it seems to have vanished as well. (Why doesn't anyone appreciate
proper OS designs, sigh?)
HIS also sold a fair number on the Continent, particularly in France,
but I don't recall any details of the sites, except that there was one
in the University at Rennes. Also don't know if any of them are still
there.
--
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
P.S...@bristol.ac.uk - Tel +44 272 303132 - FAX +44 272 291576
Paul Smee
>sites:
>
No, was AUCC that owned/ran that one. SWURCC (with whom we had some
degree of rivalry) wrote the Algol-68 compiler for it, though. AUCC
was a 'consortium' of Bath and Bristol. SWURCC was a confederation
linking Bath, Bristol, Exeter, and two Universities in Cardiff.
>I'm sure I missed several more. I think there might have been one in
>Germany, one in Ireland (Queen's University?) and one more in the U.K.
>(London?).
Several more in the UK, but not London -- see my other post of today.
Far as Ireland goes, I can't remember anymore whether Queen's
University Belfast ever actually did buy one, or whether they just
thought about it.
Paul Smee
>
>There was another one in London, at STC. This was taken out of service soon
>after STC bought ICL...
Ah, I *knew* I'd overlooked someone.