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From: alderson@Alderson.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch
Subject: Re: XDS940 computer (or Xerox Sigma 9)
Message-ID: <1991Jun10.235301.2946@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 10 Jun 91 23:53:01 GMT
References: <1991Jun5.231450.25856@digi.lonestar.org> <13933@goofy.Apple.COM> <1991Jun8.085847.7980@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@leland.Stanford.EDU (Mr News)
Reply-To: alderson@Alderson.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
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In-Reply-To: gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies)

In article <1991Jun8.085847.7980@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, gillies@m.cs (Don Gillies) writes:
>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?

Is this the origin of the Foonly?
--
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
Tops-20 Mgr.    such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
AIR, Stanford                                           --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@alderson.stanford.edu                            _The Lost Road_