Classic OS's

Al> "low cost time sharing system" was almost an oxymoron in the 60's Al> and early 70's Al> Both the cost of core, and for mass storage devices kept computer Al> configurations capable of timesharing pretty expensive. TSS-8 was Al> probably the first timesharing system for $50,000. As I recall, Al> the final configuration of the TSS/8 system I used at the Al> University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee was closer to $100K by the Al> time we added the KL8/E's and RK05's. Early RSTS (originally Al> called Edusystem-100) was somewhat less expensive, but the pre Al> RSTS/E systems were pretty limited. Not as limited as you might think -- at Lawrence U. we ran an 11/20 with an RK05 for its main storage (DECtape for auxiliary public file storage). It frequently hit 12 users during the day. When Sociology 101 students used it to do "crosstab all by all" on their survey databases, things got pretty slow... :-) It did seem to crash a lot. RSTS/E with an 11/45 and double the memory took care of that. paul