Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 3rd party OS
Message-ID: <11224@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 13 Jun 88 13:39:37 GMT
References: <3327@phri.UUCP> <63900017@convex> <321@babbage.acc.virginia.edu> <11202@steinmetz.ge.com> <3707@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 29

In article <3707@saturn.ucsc.edu> haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) writes:

| I don't know about the later Honeywell machines, but on the GE-635 it is
| the hardware, not the software, that requires one processor to handle all
| the interrupts. ...

  Yes, I certainly said that one wrong. What I meant was DTss has only
one processor in master mode, whereas GECOS had all processors running
around in the o/s. This actually caused very little problem unless
someone forgot to close (or worse open) a gate on critical code.

| > This was screaming in the days of 200ms
| >access disks. Later GE built the 270 disk, a head per track job. They
| >cost a bunch but were really fast.
|
| Actually a Burroughs disk OEMed to GE.  GE's previous disk line was one
| of those things with 3-ft diameter horizontal disks, each with its own
| separate head actuator.  This was a product originally developed for the
| GE 200 computer line, then ported to the 400-line where it was almost
| adequate, and then further ported to the 600-line which beat it to pieces.

I believe that the numbers were DSU110 for the "small" one and DSU160
for the "big" one, which held 16MW (64MB). It was as big as a
Volkswagon, and had the heads run by linear motors (if I recall
correctly, the only two other survivors of those days are out today).
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me