atex system in Houston

Paul Koning paulkoning at comcast.net
Thu Mar 14 13:52:24 CDT 2019



> On Mar 13, 2019, at 8:40 PM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Mar 13, 2019, at 8:07 PM, Rick Bensene <rickb at bensene.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Paul K. wrote:
>>> TMS-11 did support some specialized devices that could do more.  There
>> was the classified page layout system using a Tek 4010 style display
>> (4015?  A BIG tube).  
>> 
>> The big-tube Tektronix DVST (Direct View Storage Terminal) terminal was
>> the 4014.  The tube used in that terminal was the largest production
>> DVST tube that Tektronix made.
>> It was also used in the 4054 computer.
> 
> An article about those terminals also turns up the 4016 (25 inch tube -- 4014 is 19 inches).  I'm not sure any more which of the two it was.
> 
> 	paul

I found the answer.  My Spanish is nearly non-existent, but I can puzzle out just enough of this https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/tesis/2002/tdx-0218103-190320/ccs12de16.pdf .  On page 17-18 it describes the system used at the Eugene Register-Guard".  It's a three-node 11/70 system, running TMS-11, EMS-11, CMS-11, with 120 VT-72 terminals and an unstated number of VT61 terminals.

EMS-11 is a refinement of TMS-11 that came out around 1979 or 1980 (also known as TMS-11 V5, I think).  It put a thin database on top of the file based document handling that was there before, so instead of seeing 9.3 RSX-style file names the customer would see articles named by freeform text phrases.  The Denver Post was the beta site for that product; I got to babysit the initial deployment which was fun because it didn't involve real work (nothing went wrong).

The document also mentions CPMS-11, which is "Classified page makeup system" (i.e., page layout) and refers to the Tektronix 4016 it used.

I also see the CHM has a few TMS-11 documents, presumably not yet scanned.

	paul



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