Re: Ada95 speed

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <7jd72l$fja@lotho.delphi.com>,
  tmoran@bix.com wrote:
> >several real time operating systems for various
microcomputers
> >for Honeywell at the time (amazingly some of this equipment
is
> >still in use at United Airlines counters). These were not
> >expensive computers, they cost a couple of thousand dollars.
>   Were these machines widely available in 1971, or custom
> creations for a few high-volume applications?
>

They were COTS products made initially by Incoterm, an offshoot
from Raytheon, that was subsequently purchased by Honeywell.
Tens to hundreds of thousands of these were sold into all kinds
of environments, some large customers, some small (an example
customer: the railroads who used them for freight control, and
as I have mentioned, several airlines who used them for
reservations).

The software was typically custom created, like specialized PC
applications today, but the hardware was absolutely standard.

I created a complete operating system and utilities for these
machines. I think it has the distinction of being the first
widely used operating system that took a whole screen display
view of the user terminal, rather than being teletype command
line inspired. I know several users of that system (called
Incoterm/FMS) who found it painful to move to Unix later on :-)

There were many neat little ideas in that operating system (it
was by the way the first instance of the sequence of editors
that I wrote, ending up with DAED for the PC).

And it certainly was nice to get to do a complete operating
system for a small machine (from the task switching kernel
and debugger up through editors, indexed file systems, and
assemblers) including writing all the documentation. Ah, the
old days :-)

Robert


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