Re: [TUHS] Spider

[Paul Ruizendaal <pnr@planet.nl>]

> I have vague memories here that maybe Heinz can help with if his are any better.
> I believe that Sandy played a part in "the loop" or "the ring" or whatever it
> was called that we had connecting our Honeywell 516 to peripherals.  I do
> remember the 74S00 repeaters because of the amount of time that Dave Weller
> spent tuning them when the error rate got high.  Also, being a loop, Joe
> Condon used to pull his connectors out of the wall whenever people weren't
> showing up to a meeting on time.  I don't know whether our network was a
> forerunner to the spider network.

It most likely was Spider - it became operational in 1972. The vist report that I linked to earlier also says:

"The current system contains just one loop with the switching computer (TEMPO I),
four PDP-11/45 computers, two Honeywell 516 computers, two DDP 224 computers,
and one each of Honeywell 6070, PDP-8 and PDP-11/20. In fact many of these are
connected in turn to other items of digital equipment.”

It would be interesting to know more about the H516’s and Spider, any other recollections?