Comments on: Ken Olsen, RIP http://marknelson.us/2011/02/08/ken-olsen-rip/ Programming, mostly. Wed, 16 May 2012 08:30:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Dave Corley http://marknelson.us/2011/02/08/ken-olsen-rip/comment-page-1/#comment-347641 Dave Corley Tue, 08 Feb 2011 16:40:12 +0000 http://marknelson.us/?p=297#comment-347641 Most who attended university in the 70's and '80s remember the transition from IBM360/card reader to VAX/VT100. Real-time was a difficult concept to grasp for engineers who happened to use computers for projects. Submitting jobs and waiting hours for the inevitable (paper) message - unable to compile, multiple syntax errors was the norm. An interim step for me was Dartmouth's RTSS - basically dumb TTY keyboards with yellow paper for "immediate" output helped me make the mental transition. But it was the VAX and its golden-text VT100s that helped me better understand the relevance of interactive computing. My primary first problem with the VAX was in understanding how to get hard-copy paper output from a VT100 terminal. The concept of electronically routing output to one printer on a list of available printers was foreign to this mechanical engineer. And it took me a week to find out where the printers and their output bins were located. Years after its first publication, I read Tracy Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine". Data General and DEC were bitter loop 128 rivals in the mini-computer market in the early 70s. The story is about the personality of a DG hardware and software design team as they attempt to build a VAX/PDP-killer in the early-mid-70s. I believe that the DG-DEC battle contributed to Olsen's distraction. RIP, Ken Olsen. Most who attended university in the 70′s and ’80s remember the transition from IBM360/card reader to VAX/VT100. Real-time was a difficult concept to grasp for engineers who happened to use computers for projects. Submitting jobs and waiting hours for the inevitable (paper) message – unable to compile, multiple syntax errors was the norm. An interim step for me was Dartmouth’s RTSS – basically dumb TTY keyboards with yellow paper for “immediate” output helped me make the mental transition. But it was the VAX and its golden-text VT100s that helped me better understand the relevance of interactive computing. My primary first problem with the VAX was in understanding how to get hard-copy paper output from a VT100 terminal. The concept of electronically routing output to one printer on a list of available printers was foreign to this mechanical engineer. And it took me a week to find out where the printers and their output bins were located.

Years after its first publication, I read Tracy Kidder’s “Soul of a New Machine”. Data General and DEC were bitter loop 128 rivals in the mini-computer market in the early 70s. The story is about the personality of a DG hardware and software design team as they attempt to build a VAX/PDP-killer in the early-mid-70s. I believe that the DG-DEC battle contributed to Olsen’s distraction. RIP, Ken Olsen.

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