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Norsk Data
- judofyr 6y agoCan someone elaborate why this is being upvoted? EDIT: Not sure why this comment is getting downvoted. I'm just interested in why people find the article interesting and/or if there was some recent news which made Norsk Data relevant again…
- Svip 6y agoI believe it is because NORD-5 appears to be the first 32-bit minicomputer, built by Norsk Data in 1972.
- lb1lf 6y ago-They also have the dubious honor of making the first 28-bit minicomputer, if the story I was told over beers at a geekfest at my alma mater holds true. Apparently, in an effort to gain market share in the Soviet block (Which cloned ND products like there was no tomorrow anyway) without falling foul of COCOM rules, they neutered a few 32-bit NORDs and duly exported them east. Presumably the COCOM regulations of the time said 'No 32 bit exports!'...
- simion314 6y agoI upvoted because is a bit of history I did not known about, I like reading or watching videos about old computers or consoles.
- Thomas812 6y agoI upvoted because silicon valley people (such as wozniak) are often almost-exclusively credited for the advancements of the history of the computer. I did not know about the Norwegians' role which is cool.
- eitland 6y agoRelated: dang had a couple of answers a day or so that should clear ip a bunch of misunderstandings, see dangs answer here, SilasXs reply to dang and dangs reply to SilasX: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23087284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23087284 Edit, TLDR style, here's part of what dang says: > You're misinterpreting that guideline, and I'm afraid HN might be missing out on some great submissions as a result! It's not limited to what good hackers would find interesting for hacker-related reasons. It's simply: what good hackers would find interesting.
- malux85 6y agoBecause it’s interesting
- Koshkin 6y agoOne day, some hacker might want to write an emulator of this computer.
- Tor3 6y agoI already did.. one for the ND-100, and one for the ND-500(0). But they are not done yet, and not release ready. The ND-100 emulator can't run the operating system, it only executes ND-100 executables under *nix. And it can't run multi-segment programs like Notis WP. The ND-500 emulator doesn't have to worry about operating systems, but my emulator isn't complete because there are still a couple of undocumented corners I haven't figured out yet. But I can run compilers and tools on both of them. My Nokia N900 phone has been running the ND-100 emulator for a very long time.. PED editor, Fortran-77 compiler.. But not release ready still. I'm busy working on the FUSE filesystem implementation at the moment. There's another very good ND-100 emulator out there (runs executables like mine), it's on Github.
- scottlocklin 6y agoI thought it was generally interesting history, and little known enough to merit posting. Was very pleased with the response by NORD hackers. I came across it (again) reading some physics history.
- roschdal 6y agohttp://sintran.com/sintran/history/history.html http://sintran.com/sintran/history/history.html
- tannhaeuser 6y agoCoolest thing of SINTRAN (ND's O/S) was the command shell which was designed such that you could have expressive long names for commands and other files, yet could also use short forms for easy typing in a word-lattice kind of way (and more stylish than on Unix). For example, the "ls" command was "list-files" and you could write "li-fi" or "l-f" as long as there was no other command/executable in scope that would be ambiguous. Worked with more than a single hyphen as well (eg. set-file-permission etc.) Actually I implemented a Unix glob filter that did exactly that out of boredom on a project 20 years ago :) I guess emacs users and LISPers in general would be loving it (the concept not my C implementation that is).
- thatfunkymunki 6y agoCisco shell is like this, 'show running-config' becomes 'sh ru'
- pinewurst 6y agoThe Cisco shell is a direct descendent of the DEC TOPS-20 one BTW.
- cat199 6y ago> direct descendent never heard anything like this - care to elaborate / point?
- pinewurst 6y agoThe Cisco founders were DEC20/TOPS20 fanatics from Stanford. It’s perfectly sensible that their chosen CLI would reflect their favorite example - and it really is an excellent CLI. Post Cisco, Len Bosack actually started a company, XKL, intending to build the next-gen DEC20. By the time this actually happened, the world had long moved on and XKL redirected to optical networks stuff.
- kootling 6y ago> For a period in 1987, Norsk Data was the second largest company by stock value in Norway, second only to Norsk Hydro, and employed over 4,500 people. Interesting that a computer manufacturer was the second biggest company in Norway in 1987
- Gravityloss 6y agoNorway was not very rich back then yet, oil hadn't kicked in with full force.
- hkeide 6y agoNorway produced only slightly less oil in 1987 than they do now. The Aleksander Kielland accident happened in 1980, and by that time, oil was huge business.
- smnrchrds 6y agoNorway's GDP per capita was higher than US and UK in 1987. They have been rich for a long time. https://data.worldbank.org/share/widget?end=2018&indicators=NY.GDP.PCAP.CD&locations=NO-US-EU-GB&name_desc=false&start=1987&view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/share/widget?end=2018&indicators=...
- Gravityloss 6y agoGreat chart! I guess my assumed reference was the current mental image where there's the oil fund worth over a million crowns for every citizen.
- heavenlyhash 6y agoThat fund affects day to day life a lot less than you might expect, FWIW. It's not like we get to just... spend that; it's somewhat comparable to saying "the New York Stock Exchange contains over $foobar dollars per citizen" (although of course the fund isn't managed at all like a stock exchange, either). The most direct influence I've seen of the oil fund is that it provides capital behind some investments systems that are aimed to drive business creation in _non_-oil sectors (including technology).
- yangyang 6y agoHa. My father worked for Norsk Data in the UK during the late 1980s and early 1990s after they bought Wordplex. They had incredible offices at a stately home near Newbury.
- JanSolo 6y agoWeird... My father did too. He was one of the engineers who drove around fixing Wordplex word processors at customer sites. There were always a couple of spare machines sitting in his car or in the garage; he showed me how to play games on them. I even wrote some school projects on them; they had these huge daisy-wheel printers that sounded like machine guns!
- yangyang 6y agoSounds very familiar - they probably knew each other.
- rjtobin 6y agoHah, I also came here to post that my dad worked for them in the 80’s (though in Oslo, even though he’s Irish). Didn’t expect to see two other people saying the same thing! I think there’s still a Norsk Data coffee mug in his house somewhere.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- unixhero 6y agoFinally some acknowledgement for Norsk Data. It was destroyed by a right wing government which refused to "pick winners", and grant broader governmental innovation funding. And of course in addition not winning the CPU arms race which happened at the time. However to think that Norway had an infant computer industry, with its own NON-UNIX mainframe system, complete with hardware in several sizes, operating systems and so on. It was even cloned by the Soviet Union, and cloned spare parts were sold behind the iron curtain! What this company achieved was monumental.
- lb1lf 6y ago-Additionally (while on the subject of computer history and norsemen), the first ARPANET node outside the US was located in Norway; NORSAR (The Norwegian seismic survey) was hooked up in June 1973 - presumably the seismic activity of interest to the US was Soviet nuclear tests.
- thodin 6y agoThis is funny because Norsk Data computers were used in VNIIPAS ( All Union Scientific Research Institute for Applied Computerized Systems) for first Soviet X.25 network, connected to the rest of the world via Austria.
- tannhaeuser 6y agoND also had a Unix System V port running on their machines (the ND-4000 but not ND-800 series if I recall correctly). Source: worked for ND 1988/9 (not in Norway, though) when the end was nigh and they were looking for a plan B as customers moved to open systems (= Unix) Edit: didn't recall correctly; was ND-570 not ND-800 and ND-5000 not ND-4000 (in late 1980s these series were basically the same at the CMOS level and an ND-570 could be on-site migrated to 5000 by merely cutting a wire on the board with a knipper to engage additional instructions or address lines)
- pinewurst 6y agoWikipedia comments that the ND500/ND5000 architecture wasn't especially Unix friendly as it was based on a 16-bit front-end & I/O ND100 processor to the 32-bit ND500/ND5000 cpus. Also that this was ultimately a system bottleneck for competition in general.
- rbanffy 6y agoI want that terminal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ND-500#/media/File:ND-560.jpeg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ND-500#/media/File:ND-560.jpeg It looks a lot like the Siemens terminals. It was also marketed under the Tandberg name.
- tannhaeuser 6y agoThe green screens were cool, but the Nokia 80Hz+ ergonomic black-on-white terminals were actually much better and the ones that everybody wanted to use.
- rbanffy 6y agoThis one? https://www.net.fujitsu.fi/fi/historia/mikrotietokone/esitteet/nokia_personal_computer.pdf https://www.net.fujitsu.fi/fi/historia/mikrotietokone/esitte...
- unixhero 6y agoOMG! LOVE IT!
- rbanffy 6y agoAnd they even had their own iMac-liks colorful ones. Before Apple! https://www.net.fujitsu.fi/fi/historia/mikrotietokone/kuvat/mikromikko4_perhe.jpg https://www.net.fujitsu.fi/fi/historia/mikrotietokone/kuvat/...
- tannhaeuser 6y agoNo they were larger and similar in size to the ND original terminals, and with huge stands, but without the cheesy brownish color, though that's what makes ND monitors distinctly retro I guess. They were also quite slow in rendering characters so you could do "live-debugging" if your program produces lots of output to the terminal :)
- Tor3 6y agoNo, this one: https://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/Nokia_Data_VDU_301_S https://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/Nokia_Data_VDU_301... The Tandberg terminals: https://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=tandberg&go=Go https://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Special%3ASe...
- bronlund 6y agoA pretty sad part of computer history this is. At least we got the oil :D
- spsrich2 6y agoMy old college had an ND-570 and an ND-560. I learned ADA on those.
- opdahl 6y agoFunny to see Norsk Data being mentioned in Hacker News. I actually had the pleasure of attending a guest lecture in 2014 at my university (University of Tromsø) during my studies where founder Rolf Skår, and multiple other notable people from ND, talked. It was extremely interesting to hear their stories, and also especially seeing how bright and engaged they were even though they all were almost in their 80s. Something they talked about that wasn't mentioned here is how tightly Norsk Data worked with the military, and that one of their most powerful computers was specifically designed to analyze Sonar signals from sensors in North Norway to listen for submarines of the coast.
- Nursie 6y agoI first heard of ND about 15 years ago when I inherited the source to a hoary old set of C libraries with a long history behind them. I found an #ifdef ND5000 sitting in a header somewhere, and had to investigate.
- elygre 6y agoAh, the ND C-compiler. It was created in Germany. I still remember porting a fairly large application from FORTRAN to C, and then running it on the brand new compiler.
- tannhaeuser 6y agoThat was were i worked, in Kiel/North Germany! Though I didn't work on the elusive compiler stuff (only being there on an apprenticeship, and then on my first "real" freelance gig).
- Tor3 6y agoYou knew Ralf H. then? I got compiler fixes directly from him - for bugs I found in my compiled code, and once for a special version of the Pascal compiler (the standard one couldn't pack records they way we needed)
- tannhaeuser 6y agoNot sure, I'm not good with names. I remember there being two guys working permanently on compilers (Pascal, mostly, and C), and another student coming in occasionally during the period I've been there. I remember the main dev having reservations about C++ which was new at the time. I believe they had ties to CUA (Christian-Albrecht-University of Kiel), which had a pretty good reputation for compsci, and still has AFAIK.
- elygre 6y agoHe's on linkedin, if you want to connect with him.
- elygre 6y agoFirst time attempt at booting an ND-computer: "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" "No, 32 utropstegn, not 32 utropstegn, like this": "32!" "Ahhhhh..."
- Tor3 6y agoBut it was 22!, not 32!.. if you wanted to boot SINTRAN-III at least :-)
- rjsw 6y agoWould be interested to read more about their attempt to port the MIT Lisp Machine software to the ND-500.
- erikbye 6y agoDon't know anything about it, but here's an article about a keyboard intended for the machine: http://xahlee.info/kbd/racal_norsk_kps_10_keyboard.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/racal_norsk_kps_10_keyboard.html Looks cool.
- kyuudou 6y agoOn an unrelated note, thrilled to see Xah Lee is still around and kicking!
- grativo 6y agoI do not understand how such innovative organizations end up falling apart. Bell Labs had a similar objective, only researchers were able to do basically anything with unlimited funding. Many salient innovations were made at Bell Labs, I wonder if such organizations exist to this day on the scale of Bell or Norsk Data.
- Aloha 6y agoBell Labs fell apart because its reason to exist (and funding source) vanished when AT&T was broken up.
- javiramos 6y agoDoes anyone know what is the transparent container with white contents in the second picture of the wiki page? [0] It is mounted under the typing terminal. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Data#/media/File:Norsk_Data_1971.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Data#/media/File:Norsk_D...
- jgilje 6y agoIt looks like a paper punch terminal, so the container collects the leftovers after punching
- retrac 6y agoI do believe that's an ASR-33 teletype, which have a built-in paper tape punch and reader. That's the chad bin for all the little bits punched out of the tape. It's before my time, but I have used one. I can guarantee that it was never that tidy in practice. My experience with punching a tape is that the chads seem to go everywhere except the bin. It's a fire hazard before long.
- Tor3 6y agoIn the picture: - To the left: Centronics matrix printer, model 101 or 102. The "Centronics" interface lived on, but then it was on Epsons and other printers. But here's an actual Centronics. - To the right of the printer: The NORD-20 16-bit computer, which followed the NORD-2B but preceded the NORD-10. - To the right of the NORD-20: A Facit 4070 paper tape puncher and a punched card reader on the table - And of course the ASR-33 teletype which had its own tape puncher and reader. The sound of an ASR-33 will never be forgotten if you've ever used one.. good memories.
- BurningFrog 6y agoI learned programming on a Nord-10 in high school. Me and two friends wrote a chess playing program in Nord-PL. It wasn't very good, but we learned a lot, and all 3 of us made a career in software.
- mikorym 6y agoI don't know whether I am committing sampling bias, but this looks eerily familiar [1]. The perhaps incorrect deduction here is that the Nordics are ahead when it comes to core or fundamental science, but they are behind when it comes to tech business longevity and business expansion potential. Of course, many of its tech companies are rather old companies to start off with [2]. Some countries suffer from a kind of inverse of this: In South Africa, fundamental science is hard to come by. (The rest of Southern Africa is even worse.) An example of this is indeed also the tech industry: If you are a programmer in South Africa, you are quite likely to be deploying and maintaining software such as Salesforce and Oracle, AWS workflows, MS SQL databases, PostgreSQL and MySQL, and so forth; and you are unlikely to be writing the actual code for the core technology that constitutes AWS, Oracle, etc. There are people writing apps, but I don't know many examples where the apps have global traction. Most websites written for local companies are shoddy and even the ones that look nice don't have any core invention behind them. Mark Shuttleworth actually lives in the Isle of Man now (not to mention Elon Musk...) and most South Africans probably don't know what Canonical is. By contrast, if you already have a solid business in South Africa, your expansion potential is almost limitless. There are about 60 million people and most of them are below the age of 30 [3]. The youth unemployment rate, defined as unemployment of people between the age of 18 and I think 35, is usually around 60%. You also have, depending on who rates it, 7/10 of the top 10 universities in Africa as of 2020 [4]. You don't have to pay people with degrees a lot of money for it to be considered a high salary by global—especially American—standards. [1] Norsk Data was caught off guard by the PC revolution, which had one big across hardware OS; Nokia didn't realise the importance of smartphones with one big across brand OS, apart from the iPhone. (Though I am still waiting for Linux Phone OS.) [2] Nokia started off as a pulp mill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#1865%E2%80%931967 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#1865%E2%80%931967 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Africa#Age_and_sex_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Africa#A... [4] QS rates only nine universities in Africa, here is a pastebin as their website is difficult to navigate: https://pastebin.com/raw/ixLJ0Lqq https://pastebin.com/raw/ixLJ0Lqq. This means that the 10th university and below are not in the world top 500. It is quite likely that the University of Potchefstroom would be the 10th. Some sources claim 8/10 of the top 10, but I don't know which agency's ratings that is based on.
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- ggm 6y agoI worked on one, first job from university, reverse-engineering health systems data protocols to re-sell ND backed services into the hospital system. Decent enough machine but as soon as I got work on the pdp-11 and vax my heart was sold.
- bborud 6y agoA couple of years I was giving a talk on Low Power Wide Area Networking and showed off a LoRA module that my team had designed and manufactured. After the talk an elderly gentleman came over and asked lots of questions and was very interested in the module. He seemed oddly familiar. Turns out this was Lars Monrad-Krohn, one of the founders, and the CEO of Norsk Data. After the conference was over he smiled and asked "can I invite you gentlemen out for dinner so we can continue the conversation?". We had a lovely evening and many interesting discussions. He is still sharp. And one of the nicest people I've met.
- sundvor 6y agoNice. I miss my days at the greenfield Origo/TM in 96/97/98; I had the great pleasure of working with some incredibly clued in people who have done very well for themselves since. The Norwegian community was very much at the forefront; shutting down the Index project was a decision I'd truly like to see the other version of though.
- erikpl 6y agoDidn't know we used to have a computer industry here. Shame it's all gone now :/
- totorovirus 6y agoInteresting to see the monumental software having been found in northern Europe :-D
- thomasfl 6y agoNorsk Data management failed to realize that their customers only bought their proprietary hardware because that was the only way to run their software. The software was what the customers really wanted. The last years Norsk Data was in business, a large part of their income came from service contracts on their hardware. So it is understandable that Norsk Data missed the chance to switch to using standard unix and pc based hardware. The management was also very proud of their hardware and operating system. Which is very understandable since they had made them themselves in the early days. They had their own sql database, word processor, development tools and lots of customers. Norway could have been an IT giant. Instead Norsk Data had their Kodak moment 10 years before Kodak. The only thing left now is the Norsk Data campus in Oslo.
- jacobush 6y agoBut the extra tragedy is that Kodak anticipated and tried to adopt to the digital revolution. Yet failed, overtaken by the sheer speed of adoption.
- bdavis__ 6y agoThis is slightly before my time, but worldwide all F16 Weapon System Trainers (simulators for the F16 aircraft) were hosted on Norsk Data machines. They had a hardware shared memory that allowed more than 1 processor. This was 1970's / 1980's. Replaced with SGI in the 1990's. There were Norsk Data manuals laying around in the company until about 2000, because back then when you bought a computer they came with books. I was told the Norsk was chosen due to political / work share issues, as at that time in the US SEL was the dominant real time mini computer vendor. But, I was not there, so who knows..