Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> writes:

> On 2023-02-10 17:14, Scott Dorsey wrote:

>> But Compuserve is long gone and this appears to be a drive-by because
>> Mr. Slauson doesn't seem to have posted anything else much to Usenet.

> Compuserve was mostly running PDP-10 unless I'm confused. Would be a
> little surprised if they had plenty of -8650s, but I could be wrong.

Compuserve was indeed a PDP-10 shop. They developed router software which ran
on KA-10 processors to set up their network, and provided database access to
customers running System 1022 as the underlying engine. (They eventually
bought the company in order to have continuing development of 1022.)

They switched to KL-10 processors running their own microcode in the mid-70s,
and expanded their offerings to the general public. When Systems Concepts
introduced the SC-40 clone in the early 90s, they negotiated a licensing deal
with Mike and Stewart whereby they built their own SC-40s and paid a hefty
percentage (IIRC ~40%) of the list price; they did the same kind of microcode
revision to the system, and used those until they finally closed down the
successor (long since purchased by AOL/Time Warner).

--
Rich Alderson news@alderson.users.panix.com
Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen

On 2/10/2023 4:28 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:
> Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> writes:
>> On 2023-02-10 17:14, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>> But Compuserve is long gone and this appears to be a drive-by because
>>> Mr. Slauson doesn't seem to have posted anything else much to Usenet.
>
>> Compuserve was mostly running PDP-10 unless I'm confused. Would be a
>> little surprised if they had plenty of -8650s, but I could be wrong.
>
> Compuserve was indeed a PDP-10 shop. They developed router software which ran
> on KA-10 processors to set up their network, and provided database access to
> customers running System 1022 as the underlying engine. (They eventually
> bought the company in order to have continuing development of 1022.)

Compuserve was a pretty big shop at some point in time.

Running their core business on PDP-10 would not exclude
running some other stuff on VMS.

Arne

Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:
>Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> writes:
>
>> On 2023-02-10 17:14, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>>> But Compuserve is long gone and this appears to be a drive-by because
>>> Mr. Slauson doesn't seem to have posted anything else much to Usenet.
>
>> Compuserve was mostly running PDP-10 unless I'm confused. Would be a
>> little surprised if they had plenty of -8650s, but I could be wrong.
>
>Compuserve was indeed a PDP-10 shop. They developed router software which ran
>on KA-10 processors to set up their network, and provided database access to
>customers running System 1022 as the underlying engine. (They eventually
>bought the company in order to have continuing development of 1022.)

Yes, Compuserve was a PDP-10 shop. I mentioned them because Mr. Slauson was
posting through them, not that I expect that they would be a startup which
purchased a lot of vaxen and then collapsed before actually using them.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Rich Alderson wrote:
> They switched to KL-10 processors running their own microcode

Do you know what was different about their microcode?

Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> writes:

> Rich Alderson wrote:
> > They switched to KL-10 processors running their own microcode
>
> Do you know what was different about their microcode?

Only thing I remember specifically was a different page address scheme.

--
Rich Alderson news@alderson.users.panix.com
Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen

> Running their core business on PDP-10 would not exclude
> running some other stuff on VMS.

"If you're not playing with 36 bits, you're not playing with a full DEC." -Doug "DIGEX" Humphrey (trolling VMS weenies at DECUS)