[HECnet] Hooking up TOPS-20 to HECnet?

[Pontus]

On 09/23/2013 04:29 PM, Clem Cole wrote:

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 3:10 AM, Pontus Pihlgren <pontus at update.uu.se> wrote:
I recall that it was a KA10,
but did KA10's run TOPS-20?

I think you are right, but my memory is fuzzy on all this now.    IIRC with the MIT/BBN pager modification, KA10's could run ITS or TENEX (aka twinex - which was the Tops-20 pre-cursor ).   Folks like dvk or supnik are likely to remember, so I'll try to remember to ask one of them when I see them next.   A number of DARPA contractors had modified processors and I'm pretty sure it took a processor modification to run TENEX.

I loved TENEX until I was seduced by UNIX   -- maybe its the X in the name that takes you to darkside ;-)


I found the passage in the book, page 107 in this edition, sadly it doesn't say much :(

<quote>
Instead, I sat and watched the hacker deliberately connect to the MX computer, a PDP-10 at the MIT artificial intelligence labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He logged in as user Litwin and spent almost an hour learning how to operate that computer. He seemed quite unaccustomed to the MIT system, and he'd frequently ask for the automated help facility. In an hour, he'd learned little more than how to list files.
Perhaps because artificial intelligence research is so arcane, he didn't find much. Certainly the antique operating system didn't provide much protection - any   user could read anyone else's files. But the hacker didn't realize this. The sheer impossibility of understanding this system protected their information.
</quote>

"Sheer impossibility" - makes me think ITS :) Further on he comes back to the PDP-10:

<quote>
MIT. I'd forgotten to warn them. I called Karen Sollins of their computer department and told her about Friday night's intrusion. "Don't worry," she sais, "there's not much on that computer, and we're throwing it away in a few weeks."
<quote>

So anyone really interested should find Karen Sollins.

/P