Early 1979. I worked on TMS-11 from summer 1978 to summer 1980, as
"firefighter" -- traveling on-site support and software repair. I was
scheduled for CMS-11 training early 1979, but instead the Valley News developed
a serious bug so I was sent there to learn on the spot. :-)
Supposedly the Valley News was one of the biggest classified systems in the
country, 50+ pages of ads on the peak day. DEC also had a system in Melbourne,
Australia (I think) at News Corp, which was somewhat bigger still. Or perhaps
that was a bid that didn't turn into a sale? Not sure. Still, those systems
didn't have 300 terminals, the likely limit was 100 or so I think. So if you
had 330 I can see why that would be custom. TMS-11 used 11/70 systems running
IAS (trimmed down to look like RSX-11/D, the timesharing part yanked out), with
either VT61/t and/or VT71 terminals. The latter have an LSI-11 inside to do
full file local editing.
There was Typeset-10, I'm not sure how many customers that had but they were
big. Chicago Tribune, I think?
It was interesting to do field work for customers who need their system to be
very reliable because they have to produce "product" every single day. Pretty
amazing to get a job like that fresh out of college.
paul
> On Mar 13, 2019, at 2:37 PM, Wayne S <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Paul, what was the timeframe when you worked on the system in Van Nuys?
>
> I worked for a large newspaper starting in 1978 and they made their own 330
> seat Classified Sales Entry system because there wasn't anything out there
> that was big enough.
> It used Zentec ZMS-90 programmable terminals feeding Series /1 mini's that
> then fed IBM 3032 mainframe.
>
> I was wondering if DEC had that system available during that time.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
