Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Path: shellx.best.com!news1.best.com!sgigate.sgi.com!swrinde!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!ddyer From: ddyer@netcom.com (Dave Dyer) Subject: Re: PDP10 clones (was: Compuserve and the DEC-10) Message-ID: Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10 Reply-To: ddyer@netcom.com Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1] References: <43v18a$a63@cliff.swec.com> <442j6n$gip@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 17:34:20 GMT Lines: 30 Sender: ddyer@netcom6.netcom.com Xref: shellx.best.com alt.folklore.computers:36517 alt.sys.pdp10:1164 : Foonley (now defunct) was a spinoff from the Superfoonley project at the : Stanford AI Lab. They got ARPA funding to build a processor 10x faster : than the KA-10. When the project folded, DEC picked up the design (and a : designer or two) and built the KL-10. The KL-10 built upon the : Superfoonley design, but there were differences (ECL vs. TTL, etc). : Foonley built several models of their clones. The KL is more properly described as a compromised cripple of the Superfoonly design - the primary compromise being that the I and M boxes were merged to save money, at the cost of making the machine slower. The original Superfoonly design was TTL. The one and only Superfoonly that was actually built (here at Information International) was redesigned using ECL 10K, by 3/4 of the original design team. The Foonly was more than twice as fast as a KL-10. Superfoonly required a console computer to boot it up, load it's microcode, and so on. The original concept was to use a PDP-11, but the expedient thing turned out to be to use a KA-10 as the console computer (as an interim measure) and eventually to build a cheap pdp-10 out of 2901s and use it as the console computer. Foonly Inc. never made any more Superfoonlys, or delivered a real console computer to triple-i, but the design for the console computer became the core of Foonly Inc's business producing PDP-10 clones. -- --- My home page: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/dd/ddyer/home.html or try http://www.triple-i.com/~ddyer/home.html