16 Jul
1999
16 Jul
'99
10:47 p.m.
--- CLASSICCMP(a)trailing-edge.com wrote:
Ohio...
Wow! I worked with John Goltz around 1984-1986. We both worked at that
company I've mentioned here several times, Software Results Corp, the one
that made the COMBOARD and the one that sponsored "CPU Wars" (with the back-
cover ad). By the mid-eighties, he had moved from Ohio to Arizona, where
he still is. It's been a few years since I've talked to him.
I heard a great story about his days at CI$... He was looking over the
terminal driver and spotted ONE line of assembler with no comment. He
just _had_ to figure out why it was bare. It was, IIRC, a 36-bit immediate
compare against a constant that happened to be a packed ASCII string of all
"$" characters, with a branch. He determined that *that* compare and *that*
branch allowed a person to type ANY CompuServe user id code and use a
password of all dollar signs and log in as them! Talk about a wide-open-
back door. It was patched a short time later. I use the story as an example
of how powerful a single assembler instruction can be on a decent processor.
Speaking of
Compuserve, what is its history?
I think this goes back earlier than you wanted (to a time before
home micros), but here's an excerpt from a summary written by
Sandy Trevor [70000,130] I found at
http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/compuserve.txt
****
This may not be exactly what you had in mind, but it is a pretty accurate
summary of how 10's have been used at CompuServe over the past 17 years. I
--Sandy
We Call Them 10's
- A Brief History of 36-bit Computing at CompuServe -
Alexander B. Trevor
August 31, 1988
CompuServe has one of the world's most powerful remaining thirty-six bit
computing facilities...
...my two AHCL friends, Dr. John Goltz and Jeff Wilkins, went to Columbus, >
By 1978 we had two computer centers - the one in
Arlington full of KI's,
and one in Dublin, Ohio...
In 1988, I worked next door to the Dublin data center, parking my car about
20 yards from the monster dish they had on the west side of the building.
With all that, I am still 10-less. :-(
-ethan
P.S. - In this CI$ thread, someone mentioned how expensive the service used
to be. I got my first modem in 1982 - a VIC-modem for the C-64. CompuServe
was $6.00 per hour *off peak* at 300 baud. I don't remember what it was at
1200 baud, I couldn't afford the modem, let alone the online charges. I
seem to recall that on-peak 300 baud was $22, but that might be bit rot.
P.P.S - in 1986 when I got my TTY with built-in data-set and touch-tone
pad (the one that is no longer installed in the unit), I wanted to test
the modem. I plugged it into the phone line and dialed up CompuServe.
It worked at 110 baud! I didn't stay on long at less than half the normal
bandwidth. but I did get on.
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