The Dec-20

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3 total messages Started by Paul Robinson Mon, 06 Apr 1992 09:02

#40

Author: Paul Robinson
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1992 09:02

21 lines
1228 bytes

 > From: pavlov@niktow.canisius.edu (Greg Pavlov)
 > Newsgroups: comp.org.decus
 > Organization: Canisius College, Buffalo NY. 14208
 >
 > In article <1992Mar11.184149.16362@tin.monsanto.com>, lesnyd@monsanto.c
 > om (Larry Snyder) writes:
 >>
 >> When I said I disagreed with the statement that the DECSYSTEM-20 was  
 >> an improved DECsystem-10, I was talking about 2 levels:
 >>
 >   But in my personal opinion, the DEC-20 had the nicest command
 >   line interface of any system that I have ever used....
 >

Compuserve runs on DEC 10s and I've used DEC 10s.  The CLI is lousy.
The 20 does very nice.  I had the opportunity to work on one for three 
weeks.  If windowing hadn't come around, THAT was the standard to 
write CLIs for!  The CLI for the DEC-20 was totally stolen by Kermit.
Nobody has ever, in my not-so-humble opinion, ever developed a command 
line interface that was even close to the power and ease of use of 
the DECsystem 20.

Re: The Dec-20

#42

Author: oberman
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1992 16:04

21 lines
1511 bytes

In article <702562807.F00003@blkcat.UUCP>, Paul.Robinson@f417.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Paul Robinson) writes:

> Compuserve runs on DEC 10s and I've used DEC 10s.  The CLI is lousy.
> The 20 does very nice.  I had the opportunity to work on one for three 
> weeks.  If windowing hadn't come around, THAT was the standard to 
> write CLIs for!  The CLI for the DEC-20 was totally stolen by Kermit.
> Nobody has ever, in my not-so-humble opinion, ever developed a command 
> line interface that was even close to the power and ease of use of 
> the DECsystem 20.  

I think you might be confusing hardware with software. The wonderful CLI was in
the TOPS-20 OS. I believe it ran on a 10 processor although it was probably
developed for the 20. (Of course, the 20 still had a 10 CPU, but it is my
recollection that TOPS-20 ran on older KA and KI CPUs and not just on those
hybrid systems dubbed DECsystem 20s.

R. Kevin Oberman			Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Internet: oberman1@llnl.gov		(510) 422-6955

Disclaimer: Don't take this too seriously. I just like to improve my typing
and probably don't really know anything useful about anything.

Re: The Dec-20

#60

Author: Tom Allebrandi
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1992 14:31

28 lines
1809 bytes

In article <1992Apr6.080457.1@ptavv.llnl.gov>, oberman@ptavv.llnl.gov writes:
> In article <702562807.F00003@blkcat.UUCP>, Paul.Robinson@f417.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Paul Robinson) writes:
>> Compuserve runs on DEC 10s and I've used DEC 10s.  The CLI is lousy....
> 
> I think you might be confusing hardware with software. The wonderful CLI was in
> the TOPS-20 OS.

Also, as I recall, while it is true that Compuserve is based on DEC
10's, the operating system is pretty close to custom. It is not a
standard TOPS-10/TOPS-20/Tenex/Twenex.

A number of years ago, I was talking to some people who were going to
work very closely with Compuserve in porting their games from Unix to
Compuserve. Having TOPS-10 experience, I offered my services and was
told that the Compuserve environment was so heavily modified that my
experience didn't count.

As an aside, we VMSers got the 39.39 character filenames and a few
other things from TOPS-20, now if they'd just bring over command
completion and inline prompting we'd be set :-)

--- Tom
Tom Allebrandi             | Mail guru   - DECUS UUCP Development Team
Inland Steel Research Labs | Chairperson - VMSnet Working Group, DECUS VAX SIG
East Chicago, IN           | Internet:  allebrandi@inland.com
219 399 6306               | UUCP:      ...!uunet!inland!allebrandi
                           | DECUServe: allebrandi

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