6 Nov
2020
6 Nov
'20
12:11 p.m.
I worked at Gould CSD in Urbana on the Powernode Unix kernel from '86-'88
and knew the machines were descendants of SEL machines, but that is about
it. The ECL based logic was named "firebreather" for a reason. They were the
fastest thing at the time. Being a computer company in Urbana Illinois, we all
joked about being where the HAL 9000 would eventually be born. It was my
first real job out of college, so I had a blast, right up until the company laid
off a large portion of our office in a single day. I think I still have a t-shirt
which says "Gould lost $300M and all I got was this lousy t-shirt". I
wasn't
on the list, but I left shortly thereafter. The people I worked with were all
top notch and I missed them after leaving.
--tom
On 11/6/20 1:37 PM, Bob Smith via cctalk wrote:
My memories of SEL beginnings are dusty. and rusty. I
recall a bunch
of their systems being used in science related efforts, beecause of
the high IO capability. At the time, for NASA and others, it was the
ideal platform for data collection. Not a bad compute capability -
many other systems in that space could do compute efforts more
quickly, but the none could match data IO for years. iirc, this was in
both the 16 and 32 bit lines.
I alwo recall when some folks from DEC VAX et al efforts left and
joined SEL - yep there is some back story there.
bob
On Thu, Nov 5, 2020 at 2:35 PM Eric Moore via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> Hello, I have pulled together a website with links to resources and
> information on SEL, or Systems Engineering Laboratories.
>
> http://mnembler.com
>
> SEL was a computer manufacturer in the 60s and 70s which later was acquired
> by Gould and then Encore. They made many major innovations and were
> instrumental in the success of the Apollo program.
>
> The website is still a work in progress, but I did want to share it with
> yall.
>
> -Eric