New subject: DPS-6 and Ultimate OS (was: MULTICS...)

31 Oct 2000

...
  Douglas Quebbeman wrote:

 Hello,

 I've gotten mail from the guy who is supervising the
 decommisioning of the Canadian DND Multics System at
 Halifax. Not much new, but it's a little clearer in
 that all someone needs to do is attend the auction
 and buy it and bring it home on a truck. At least I
 doubt any "schools" will bid on this, if they do,
 they'd have their hands full.  
 I would sell my MSFT stock for this system 8-) however it is no clear, 
 at least not to me, if you will get also the tapes and some bootable
 disks in order to run the whole system or you will end up with just 
 a bunch of GE hardware. 
You would not be ending up with GE hardware. While the 
Level 68 (6180) system Honeywell built carried over some
features from the GE635/645, it had quite a bit of new
stuff that wasn't in the  645. For example, rings were
implemented in software in the GE645 version of Multics.
The Honeywell 6180 put them in hardware.

Additionally, this is not a Honeywell 6180 being offered,
but a DPS-8/M.

If you contact Mr. Renshaw, he may be able to answer
the question about a set of coldstart tapes for the
machine. If not, Perigon Systems (the "last" Multics)
would be able to supply them. The trick is, for how much?

regards,
-dq

MULTICS Installation, Halifax