Talk:Berkeley Timesharing System

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Link and a quote

Project Genie: Berkeley’s piece of the computer revolution

In the next three years they developed the bulk of the software suite, including the timesharing system, the line-oriented text editor QED, the now-standard fork operation to create new processes, command-line completion, state-restoring crash recovery and many other innovative features.

68.246.234.50 (talk) 20:54, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Name?

Right now there is not much info here independent of the SDS 940 and Project Genie articles. In fact, the only places I find something like this name used, it is "Berkeley time-sharing system", that is, with a dash and lower case. This makes me think it was not a proper name but a descriptive one. So perhaps it should be merged? Might also be confused with CalTSS which was a follow-on project for the CDC 6400 it seems. W Nowicki (talk) 04:25, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I learned to program on the SDS-940 in 1968. My high school rented time on one, owned by Com-Share Inc. of Ann Arbor Michigan. Later, in the summer of 1972, I got a summer job at Com-Share as a programmer. At that time, Com-Share and Tymshare Inc. owned, between them, most of the SDS-940 machines ever made. Com-Share called their version of the Berkeley Timesharing System Commander I -- at the time, they were migrating from the 24-bit SDS-940 to the 32-bit XDS Sigma 7 (Formerly the SDS Sigma 7), which they called the Commander II system. I still have my Commander II Fortran manual, but nothing from the Commander I system. I hope the additonal company and product names help someone track down more documentation. Douglas W. Jones (talk) 22:23, 22 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First general-purpose time-sharing system?

What was the relative timing of DEC's PDP-6/10 time-sharing system and the 940 time sharing system? I used the Dial-Data 940 in 1967-68, TOPS-10 in 1970, ITS (PDP-10) starting in 1971 (which of course was not commercial), and occasionally TOPS-20 later, but I don't know the timing of their releases. --Macrakis (talk) 23:30, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The PDP-6 was first shipped in June 1964. It's Monitor timesharing system also allowed general-purpose user programming. But I don't know whether it also shipped in 1964 or was completed later. This seems to indicate it was available well before 1967: https://www.ultimate.com/phil/pdp10/tops-10 Lars Brinkhoff (talk) 11:58, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These listings are from 1965: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp6/tsExec1.4/ Lars Brinkhoff (talk) 12:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article says "A small number of companies were already offering time-sharing services. Among the early service providers were Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), which first demonstrated time-sharing in 1962, IBM, CEIR, Keydata, Rand Corporation and Comshare. Most were using early forms of hardware from Digital Equipment that included PDP-1, PDP-2, PDP5 and PDP6. (Scientific Data Systems did not ship the first Tymshare SDS 940 system until April 1966)."

https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2016/12/102762440-05-01-acc.pdf

Lars Brinkhoff (talk) 07:10, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]