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From: mikkel@cg-atla.UUCP (Carl Mikkelsen)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: The truth about cat
Message-ID: <990@cg-atla.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Oct-87 16:00:00 EST
Article-I.D.: cg-atla.990
Posted: Fri Oct 23 16:00:00 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Oct-87 23:03:44 EST
References: <7367@alice.UUCP> <48800008@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <1877@frog.UUCP> <3190@ames.arpa>
Reply-To: mikkel@cg-atla.UUCP (Carl Mikkelsen)
Organization: Compugraphic Corp. Wilmington, MA
Lines: 40

In article <3190@ames.arpa> msf@amelia.UUCP (Michael S. Fischbein) writes:
>In article <1877@frog.UUCP> john@frog.UUCP (John Woods, Software) writes:
>>  This led to the
>>MIT AI people developing the Incompatible Time-Sharing system (ITS) for their
>>PDP-10 computers (and a queer beast it was!).
>
>It was incompatible when you weren't happy with the way it worked.  When
>you were, or when ITS vs Multics bull sessions were held, it was the
>Incomparable Time-sharing System!
>
>	mike
>
>Michael Fischbein                 msf@prandtl.nas.nasa.gov
>                                  ...!seismo!decuac!csmunix!icase!msf

It was hardly incompatible.  There were four machines, on the same
floor, all running the same OS.  Through a local ARPA-net link, they
could directly access each other's disks, perhaps the first true
remote file system implementation.  I hacked TECO into being an
interactive screen editor, laying the foundation for Stallman and EMACS.

All of this was done on a PDP-10 with about 3-5 MICROsecond core
memory.  A 68000 makes it look slow!

Kernal documentation!  No problem.  The listings were the docs, and
everything was written in God's own programming language, PDP-10
assembler.

Although it was called Incompatible as a play on CTSS (which it used
parasitically to find out the time of day), I cast my vote for
Incomparable.

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