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From: gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies)
Subject: Re: XDS940 computer (or Xerox Sigma 9)
Message-ID: <1991Jun8.085847.7980@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
References: <1991Jun5.231450.25856@digi.lonestar.org> <13933@goofy.Apple.COM>
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1991 08:58:47 GMT

The XDS was not *that* great a machine.  When Xerox PARC was starting
up, they asked the Xerox bigwigs to buy them a DEC-10.  Corporate
Xerox balked at the idea, and offered them an XDS machine.  The PARC
researchers told them "no thank you, we don't need it after all."
They went back to the lab and built a DEC-10 from scratch using TTL
parts available at the time.  This was the genesis of CPU development
at Xerox.

Legend has it the mutant PDP-10 was faster than DEC's best model.

Trivia Question:  What was this DEC-10 named?

Don Gillies	     |  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
gillies@cs.uiuc.edu  |  Digital Computer Lab, 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana IL


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