Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!ames!vsi1!wyse!mips!wilkes
From: wilkes@mips.COM (John Wilkes)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: DECsystem-20 (sort of...)
Message-ID: <24933@tau.mips.COM>
Date: 7 Aug 89 21:16:06 GMT
References: <2679@phred.UUCP>
Reply-To: wilkes@mips.COM (John Wilkes)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 29

In article <2679@phred.UUCP> artm@phred.UUCP (Curmudgeon) writes:
>While all this stuff is being bandied about regarding the -6, -10
>and -20, I'm wondering if anybody knows anything about the fate of
>Foonly, Inc.  (I hope that's the right spelling.)

Yes, that is the correct spelling.  I believe that Foonly is no longer in
business, except perhaps for maintenance of one or two machines.  I think
the world's fastest PDP-10, the Foonly F-1, is still in service somewhere
in southern California.  Supposedly, it was being used to do animation and
graphics.  (Remember the TRON instruction?  Remember the movie?  Perhaps
apocryphal, but the story is that the F-1 was used to make the movie.)

Tymshare, Inc., had a relationship with Foonly to make and market the
"26KL" system, a Foonly F-4 that ran Tops-20.  The Foonly F-4 was based on
2901 bit-slice processors, and it had a really cool console computer (based
on a 6502, I think) that was capable of single-stepping the microcode.
Why, you could even patch the microcode on the fly!  Then McDonnell Douglas
bought Tymshare, and the 26KL project was canned.  And with it, my hopes
for the future of Tops-20.

Until very recently, Dave Poole (President and CEO of Foonly, Inc.)  was
working at Elxsi (for the past two years.)  Dunno where he will land next.
Far as I know, he and his bird still live on his sailboat in the Berkeley
Marina.

-- 
-wilkes

wilkes@mips.com   -OR-   {ames, decwrl, pyramid}!mips!wilkes