16 Jul
2021
16 Jul
'21
5:28 p.m.
On Friday, July 16th, 2021 at 1:27 AM, Lars Brinkhoff <lars(a)nocrew.org> wrote:
John Floren wrote:
Yes, WAITS is what I was thinking of. As I mentioned in my previous mail,
it feels like the SAIL timesharing systems get mentioned briefly in
a lot of accounts of historical computing, sometimes with mention that
they had some sort of (relatively) advanced video terminals, but no
in-depth descriptions of the actual hardware/software environment.
I will take a look at saildart.org and the Prolegomenon, thanks!
John
Speaking of SAIL (and I suppose further derailing
an already derailed
discussion), I've occasionally looked for more information about the
environment (typically whenever a book or article briefly mentions
SAIL as a place with lots of custom hardware and software) but come up
with little. Anyone know of good description of SAIL computer systems?
I'm risking the Wrath of the Moderator here, but I really want to supply
some information. Sorry, this is very far from Unix. But hey, SUDS was
used to design the Stanford SUN Unix workstation.
What do you mean with "SAIL computer systems"? I think upthread SAIL
was referencing the Algol compiler written at the Stanford AI lab. But
SAIL was also an acronym for the entire lab, AND also used as a name for
the main timesharing computer hardware. The hardware was first a PDP-6,
then adding a PDP-10 (KA10), then a KL10. The operating system was
eventually named WAITS, but was also sometimes called SAIL or just
SYSTEM. WAITS was also run on two Foonlies at other sites, and those
could also be called SAIL computer systems in some sense.
I gather you probably mean the AI lab and its computers. The best place
for information is saildart.org, and Bruce Baumgart is working on a tome
called "SAILDART_Prolegomenon". This work in progress is 116 pages.
https://github.com/PDP-10/waits/blob/master/doc/SAILDART_Prolegomenon_2016.…