atex system in Houston

[Paul Koning]

> On Mar 12, 2019, at 10:10 PM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> Hmmm, are these the atex racks seen lurking in the background of that recent storage space trawl down near Houston?
> 
> https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-DEC-PDP-11-34-Minicomputer-With-Kennedy-Tape-Drive-J11-CPU-2-Terminals/123688125244

Interesting.  Atex is, or was at one time anyway, a manufacturer of typesetting systems for newspapers.  DEC was also in that business with Typeset-11 (TMS-11) but Atex was more successful, certainly for smaller newspapers because it used less expensive PDP11 models.

The "multi-processor bus" thing is curious.  And I wonder what the terminals are like.  If they are typesetting terminals, I think they support some sort of WYSIWYG editing setup -- that too was a competitive advantage vs. the "mark-up" approach (sort of like Runoff on steroids) that Typeset-11 offered.  Looking at the keyboards would give a clue.

The "11-34 minicomputer... J-11 CPU" description is a bit strange.  Possibly a dual CPU setup with one of each?  But that seems strange because those two are from different generations, and interfacing them together would be tricky and not all that useful.

	paul