Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!oliveb!veritas!amdcad!sono!miklg
From: miklg@sono.uucp (Michael Goldman )
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: XDS940 computer (or Xerox Sigma 9)
Message-ID: <1991Jun19.154421.1963@sono.uucp>
Date: 19 Jun 91 15:44:21 GMT
References: <1991Jun5.231450.25856@digi.lonestar.org> <13933@goofy.Apple.COM> <1991Jun12.180535.19518@sono.uucp> <1991Jun17.173204.4896@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
Organization: Acuson; Mountain View, California
Lines: 31

herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com writes:

>Ok, if we're naming names, I think the detail should be right on this.
>They decided to microcode the ten, and They paid for it, but Richard
>Wagman did it.  Dick's approach to PDP-10 macro was to define a set
>of macroes that let him write 370 opcodes and syntax and get PDP-10
>assemblies.  I used a piece of his 370 code to do a little bit more
>than he needed to, once.  Interesting.

>dan herrick

Thanks for the detail.  I was peripheral to all that so I missed much of
the details.  I was engaged in a benchmarking study which showed that
a DEC-10 running 940 code could handle about 5 times the load of a 940.
Since a DEC-10 cost only about 4+ times the 940, we thought we had something
but, MDSI had been selling microcomputers to their timesharing base so
940 usage started declining about then (1981) and then the recession just
wiped it out.  The thing that really obviated it was the new software
they (finally!) got on the VAX.  The customers who saw it were falling
all over themselves to get it.  It was the CAD equivalent of going to
"point-and-click" after using BASIC on a TTY.

As I mentioned in another posting, Dick went to DEC to work on the follow-up
DEC-10 just before I left.

BTW, I still see the names of some of my former supervisors from MDSI, they
seem to still be in Ann Arbor.  One was in "Business Week" as the Pres.
of an interesting start-up.

Regards,
  Michael Goldman