message volume

[Maxwell Lol]

You didn't need an ISP. We used modems....

[Larry Blanchard]

We had Multics on a GE635 at Hughes Aircraft around 1966 or so. I remember running a job and having the source listing come out on one printer, the link edit list on another, and the actual program output on a third :-).

I've still got the preliminary manual for the IDS database, the first one commercially available IIRC.

By that time I'd been programming computers for about 10 years - yes, I am that old :-).

[Larry Blanchard]

Interesting - where'd you get the data?

I suspect the poster who pointed the finger at all the ISPs who are dropping Usenet has the answer to the recent (last month or two) dropoff.

[Puckdropper]

"charlie" wrote in news:g52o9k$24e$ [e-mail]:

That's the computing equivalent of being older than dirt! ;-)

A young whipper-snapper

[charlie]

that would be a pretty good trick for 1966. multics never ran on a ge635. at that point, there was a multics emulator that ran on a ge635. the actual ge645 was developed from a ge635, by adding special hardware. multics only ran natively on the 645.

from the multics history at ftp://ftp.stratus.com/vos/multics/tvv/history.html: A GE-635 was delivered to Project MAC in August 1965 for use running the 645 simulator. The 645 was delivered to Project MAC in January 1967, and the system was self hosting by the end of 1968.

the first 'customer' was mit, and as noted:

MIT's Multics was finally opened for paying customers in October 1969, several years later than planned. Responsibility for running the GE-645 was transferred from Project MAC to MIT's Information Processing Center. Pioneer users of the system put up with a lot: crashes, poor response, constant change, arrogance from developers, and inexplicably missing features. The Multics developers and the MIT Information Processing Center management worked furiously to fix problems and make good on overdue promises, and to stave off abandonment of the system by ARPA, GE, or large MIT users.

the second customer was RADC in 1970:

The second Multics site was at Rome Air Development Center, Griffiss AFB, Rome, New York. Some research done at this site was classified intelligence studies. RADC also studied software engineering and software tools.

hughes aircraft was never a multics site. you may have been running the 'other' honeywell os called gecos.

i worked in multics software development for honeywell 1977-1986 and my fingers were in a lot of places in the system code there.

ids never ran on multics. the database available for it was mrds, which was an implementation of ibm's relational database language. since mrds predated db/2, we claimed that honeywell had the first commercially available relational database system. i was involved in a project to replace it in the mid-80's, just before the time i left honeywell.

regards, charlie

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[Larry Blanchard]

Could be - my memory is a little fuzzy back that far. I think a local service bureau had a 645 a few years later.