atex system in Houston

[Paul Koning]

Early 1979.  I worked on TMS-11 from summer 1978 to summer 1980, as "firefighter" -- traveling on-site support and software repair.  I was scheduled for CMS-11 training early 1979, but instead the Valley News developed a serious bug so I was sent there to learn on the spot.   :-)

Supposedly the Valley News was one of the biggest classified systems in the country, 50+ pages of ads on the peak day.  DEC also had a system in Melbourne, Australia (I think) at News Corp, which was somewhat bigger still.  Or perhaps that was a bid that didn't turn into a sale?  Not sure.  Still, those systems didn't have 300 terminals, the likely limit was 100 or so I think.  So if you had 330 I can see why that would be custom.  TMS-11 used 11/70 systems running IAS (trimmed down to look like RSX-11/D, the timesharing part yanked out), with either VT61/t and/or VT71 terminals.  The latter have an LSI-11 inside to do full file local editing.

There was Typeset-10, I'm not sure how many customers that had but they were big.  Chicago Tribune, I think?

It was interesting to do field work for customers who need their system to be very reliable because they have to produce "product" every single day.  Pretty amazing to get a job like that fresh out of college.

	paul


> On Mar 13, 2019, at 2:37 PM, Wayne S <Wayne.Sudol at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Paul, what was the timeframe when you worked on the system in Van Nuys? 
> 
> I worked for a large newspaper  starting in 1978 and they made their own 330 seat Classified Sales Entry system because there wasn't anything out there that was big enough.
> It used Zentec ZMS-90 programmable terminals feeding Series /1 mini's that then fed IBM 3032 mainframe.
> 
> I was wondering if DEC had that system available during that time.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone