26 Oct
2017
26 Oct
'17
9:03 a.m.
On 10/25/17 11:55 AM, Rich Alderson via cctalk wrote:
Noel, do have a reference for "some commercial
time-sharing system in the
Boston area"? From Paul Allen's autobiography, the Harvard system was followed
immediately by their move to Albuquerque, where they leased time on the local
school board's PDP-10, and that's what my friends who worked for Micro-soft
back then have told me, as well.
Harvard had an SDS 940, which shipped with a version of Berkeley's timesharing
system. Tymshare's version of that system was significantly improved, and included
"Super BASIC". SDS's OS was replaced with Tymshare's at Harvard because
the original
was so bad, and so they were exposed to that version of BASIC. PA told me that was
the influence for M-S's BASIC extensions.