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Origins and development of TOPS-20 (1996)
- dano 9y agoOpen the article and search for "Escape Recognition, Noise Words, Help" which was encapsulated into the COMND JSYS in TOPS-10 and TOPS-20. One of the most key things about Escape Recognition on TOPS-20 was that it could used by novices and experts alike. Novices could type a question mark (?) at any point, even before logging in, and the available commands would be displayed. An expert could also type a question mark at any point in a complex command line to display that pesky option that he'd otherwise forgotten about. TOPS-20 occupied entirely too much of my time during college. This 1982 Rolling Stone article about LOTS-A and its users at Stanford captured the feeling well http://www.designersnotebook.com/Scrapbook/Hackers_in_Paradise/hackers_in_paradise.htm http://www.designersnotebook.com/Scrapbook/Hackers_in_Paradi... If you're interested in reading about the COMND JSYS, see chapter 5 of this Macro Assembler book from 1980. ftp://kermit.columbia.edu/kermit/dec20/assembler-guide.txt
- ggm 9y agoI only did TOPS-10. It was interesting to read about it, in the context of a world view which went (considerably) further. 36 bit was my dawn. I'm still slightly freaked we had such variances in word and byte size. things you can do in sixbit chars.. why DEC went there. And the whole UUO thing. Mind. Blown.