UNIVERSITY MATHEMATICAL LABORATORY, CAMBRIDGE

NOTES OF A MEETING HELD ON 29/9/66 TO DISCUSS THE ON-LINE SYSTEM

Present: MVW, DWB, DFH, AGF, DB, PRR.

  1. It was agreed to work towards a Mark 1 system suitable for limited release outside the group. This system will provide limited facilities, but in a "palatable" form. No guarantee of onward compatibility will be made, but files created when using Mark 1 will be useable in future Marks.
  2. PD15 was agreed in principle. Further points for discussion are
    1. Warning of forcible log-out, and mechanism thereof.
    2. Whether off-line jobs can attach themselves to consoles.

    DWB will produce a paper describing an initial system, after discussion with interested parties in the group.

  3. It was agreed that the only extension required to the file system was extra commands, in particular to print dictionary and change status. It was noted that the filemaster already provides necessary mechanisms. (see P.D. 14).
  4. DWB's proposals for the command switching program were agreed. It was noted that they coincide more or less with DFH's new command switching program. DFH will produce a paper describing his program.
  5. It was agreed to use the escape character mechanism for erasing last character/line on Teletypes.

    It was agreed that "erase last character" should be recursive.

    It was agreed that on Teletypes a non-printing key should be used to generate a record-separator.

    Points for discussion are

    1. Whether a non-printing key should be used to generate a fault (as ALTMODE presently does).
    2. What to do with other non-printing keys, e.g. TAB, VT.

    With these exceptions, PD17 was agreed.

  6. Outstanding points for discussion at the next meeting are
    1. BREAK
    2. Dumping
    3. Special faults.

DWB
30 September 1966


Copyright © 1966 University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. Distributed by permission. Thanks to Barry Landy, Roger Needham and David Hartley for giving permission to distribute these documents. Thanks to Barry Landy for lending me the paper document from which this was scanned. Any typographical errors probably arose in the course of OCR.


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