TWENEX.ORG RETURNSIn 1994 we contacted Texas Women University to try to resurrect their DECSYSTEM-2065 which had just been switched off into hibernation in an underground machine room. Our proposal to the dean of the CS Dept was that we would maintain the system and pay for its electrical consumption if they would allow it to remain in the machine room and provide us with a network connection. Unfortunately our proposal got bogged down in academic bureaucracy .. perhaps now the 2065 is scrap?In 1995 we were talking with Pat Tressel, a woman with two KS10s in her living room, about our plans. We then tried to pursue a solution with an EMULEX tech to see if a PDP-10 UNIBUS to SCSI BUS adapter could be created. There actually is a PDP-11 UNIBUS to SCSI BUS adapter, but it needs to be made clear that the two UNIBUSes are very different. That said, running a *reliable* set of drives that didn't require three phase power pretty much kept us down. Pat wanted to give us a KS10, but without a solution for storage, we worried the machine would just sit. In 2000 Bob Supnik released his SIMH emulator which succesfully emulates an array of architectures including the KS10. We began running TOPS-20 4.1. It was accessible via telnet through an emulated DZ11. Unfortunately the DZ11 was unreliable, the KS10 had no ethernet support and TOPS-20 4.1 did not support TCP. On top of that, the KS10 could only support a small number of users compared to the 25000 users on our UNIX side who were curious about TOPS-20. Rather than continue with that setup, we decided to wait.
OPTION ONE: XKL created the TD-1, a smaller, slightly faster version of
KL10B. 9 years later, here we are. A KL10B with support for 8 RH20s which could handle up to 7 or 8 RP07 disk drives (about 500mb each), under SMP NetBSD on a DEC Alpha 5300 |