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From: darrell@sdcsvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.os
Subject: Re: Why no "real" distributed systems?
Message-ID: <2745@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: Thu, 19-Feb-87 20:54:39 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.2745
Posted: Thu Feb 19 20:54:39 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Feb-87 03:21:03 EST
Sender: darrell@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU
Organization: Alliant Computer Systems, Littleton, MA
Lines: 13
Approved: mod-os@sdcsvax.uucp

A very pleasant system which was 2/3 of a distributed system existed about 8
years ago on DEC-10's (TOPS-10 with extensive non-DEC modifications).  It had:
  Transparent distributed file & peripheral system
  Transparent distributed accounting & privilege system
It did not automatically load-balance, however, processes could be auto-
matically spawned on other CPUs (including machine-code-incompatible PDP11's).
This was NOT DECnet - ISCnet predated DECnet and to the end had considerably
more functionality as a moderately tightly coupled system.

This was implemented by a small company (Interactive Sciences Corp., Braintree,
MA) with an average of five programmers over four years.  Many features still
equal to the best currently available.  (I can bend your ear for hours :-) )
	Geoff Steckel (steckel@alliant.UUCP)