9 Mar
2023
9 Mar
'23
8:29 p.m.
We still have ice on the inside of the windows up here š
Nice of you guys to remember this history. Some of the STAR designers and team are still
around and kicking. Just had lunch with four of them last Friday.
I learned too that as they migrated the design from STAR to 205 to ETA10, some of that
āmagicā in the logic design became black magic as they got stuff working, like stream
instructions, but didnāt know how or why :-) Simulation said it shouldnāt work but
reality said it didā¦
cje
--
Chris Elmquist
On Mar 9, 2023, at 10:11 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
ļ»æAs to what a "station" looked like:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/15/6d/fa/156dfa0a3b573b6ff9ca074d62fb19a9.jpg
Those things with CRT terminals on them are stations--they handle the
various I/O tasks. Basically, 16 bit minicomputers.
The photo might be the installation at CDC ADL, from the low ceiling and
cramped space. During the OPEC oil embargo, I made myself comfortable
with a pillow borrowed from my room at the Ramada and a good book
nestled between the SBUs. It was probably the warmest place for miles.
The offices at ARHOPS, by contrast, had ice on the inside of the
windows...
Back then, in Sunnyvale, you had three choices if you were doing OS
development. You could turn in your build materials to the STAR-1Bs at
SVLOPS and hope that an all-night (the 1B ran at 1/100 the speed of the
100) session didn't end in a system crash. You could finagle some CE
time at Lawrence Livermore, which was far from a sure thing (one of the
reasons for having a DOE "Q" clearance). Or you could hop the "noon
balloon" out of San Jose to the Twin Cities and use the STAR at ADL. If
it was wintertime, my department in Sunnyvale had a "community parka"
for those unfortunates visiting the land of ice sports.
--Chuck
