Re: Tymnet [Telecom]

On 9/5/2009 8:58 AM, Steven wrote:

There are numerous errors in that wikipedia article and also in the one about Tymnet . I know some local (Silicon Valley) people who should edit the Tymnet aspects, and perhaps I should edit the Tymshare aspects.

Some better info about the origins of Tymnet are in the following interviews of its creator, LaRoy Tymes:

This one is definitive:

This one is interesting:

And here's a short story by LaRoy Tymes at the Computer History Museum's site :

" I wrote all of the original code for TYMNET from 1968 " through 1971 in assembly for the SPC-12 (which lasted for " only a year or so), the SDS-940(which ran the network " supervisor, access control, and accounting package), and the " Varian 620-I (the network nodes). Norman Hardy contributed " ideas, a few of which were taken from the Octopus network " (1966-1968) at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Livermore, " which networked the IBM 7030 Stretch, the CDC 6600, and some " other machines and peripherals. Ann Hardy and David Gardner " made helpful modifications to the SDS-940 operating system. " " After 1972 significant contributors to TYMNET included Joe " Rinde (Supervisor on the TYMNET engine), Carl Holmberg " (further development on Supervisor after Rinde), John Kopf " (operating system for the TYMNET engine), Art Caisse " (interfacing TYMNET to various mainframes), and June " Nishimoto (PDP-10 base enhancements). Guy Blood and Verne " Van Vlear did not work on the network itself, but took care " of accounting and access control databases. " " On the hardware side, I designed and microcoded the CPU of " the TYMNET engine. Other hardware engineers on the engine " project were Barry Burnsides, Ron Graves, and Larry " Pizzella. " " The last major contributors to the TYMNET technology made " the conversion to SPARC workstations in 1996. They included " Romulo Raffo, Bill Soley, and myself. " " Bill Combs was the first and major sales person for TYMNET. " " In a project of such a size, many other people were " involved, but the above list is a fairly complete list of " the major innovators and contributors. " " Incidentally, I booted the network in its complete form in " November of 1971. It ran without a single system crash or " reboot until March of 2003, when it was shut down. It " survived many hardware and software upgrades during that " time without a single system wide failure. Also, I wrote " three versions of the routing function that determined the " optimum path through the network, one in assembly for the " SDS-940 in 1971, one in assembly and microcode for the " TYMNET engine in 1974, and the last one in C for the SPARC " in 1996. The one I wrote in 1974 ran 24/7 for 22 years " without being touched or "maintained". I think that might be " some sort of industry record for mission critical software.

I've enjoyed reading this history of Tymnet. I used Tymnet, or maybe Telenet, to connect to The Source in the late 1970s or early 1980s. On weekends, The Source cost about $2.50 per hour. It cost me another $5 per hour to call from San Luis Obispo CA to Ventura CA where the closest network dial-in was. So, I spent $7.50 per hour to use The Source. I used their MC6800 cross assembler to develop my first processor based product before I had a computer. Later I got a Cromemco Z-80 system and did development on that. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo also had open dial-in modems where you could telnet to pretty much anywhere. So, I got an account on the Cleveland Freenet. I then had access to Internet email.

Stuff has changed...

Harold

That's a word from the past. It was named that after Crothers Memorial Hall, a dorm for graduate engineering students at Stanford, where one of its founders lived, as did I in around 1954. I can't remember the founder's name; fortunately I can still remember my own.