36bit still in use ?

[Jacob Dahl Pind]

Given the certain overlap of interests some of you might have seen this, 
please bare over with me.

On the talk of copyright status on TOPS-10/20 on the hecnet maillist, it 
was hinted at tops-20 where used embedded for routers from XKL, running on 
reimplemnted pdp10 hardware.

<qoute>
Unfortunately I do not have much details. I was at the Living Computer 
Museum and talked with RIch Alderson, who used to work at XKL. And he 
showed me a
newer generation router from XKL, opened up, at LCM. And they use a PDP-10 
on a chip, and it was actually running TOPS-20, and I could play around at 
the
EXEC level in there.
</quote>

Findes it somewhat hard to imagine anyone would take 36bit architectur and 
build a router around it.
But it does seem posible they really do, I visisted 
ftp://xkl.com/pub/download/

tar xvf DarkStar_v3.0.0.tgz
and looking in upgrade-example.txt

I sees things as 
System Processor (XKL-2)
  2.    XMH-1 (256MW), Testing: SDdAa, on line at LPN o0
Reading 0704 pages
0704000 words read in 36 bit mode

..

Its alive! who would have though that


--
Jacob Dahl Pind | telefisk.org | fidonet 2:230/38.8