35.3 Weekend Wonder Crew
“It took more that one weekend to get the whole job done, but most of it was done in the 2 day extravaganza. I don’t remember everyone who participated, but John Strait, Don Scelza, Brad Myers, and I were there.
There must have been 3 or 4 others, but I don’t recall who.”
170 CHAPTER 35. MPOS - PERQ MULTIPLE PROCESS OS
Chapter 36
PERQ Mysteries to be solved
• What/where was Alpha? (this was where “action items” were dis-cussed on Jan. 10, 1983)
• Why wasn’t the floating point hardware used?
• According to the T2 Service Guide, “the OIO board has the link logic built in”. Is this all OIO boards? If not, what changes would need to be made to add this to an OIO board.
• Why would they design a system with a clock/calendar that the users could not set without special hardware and software?
• Why was no software written that would allow POS programs to run as processes under Accent?
171
172 CHAPTER 36. PERQ MYSTERIES TO BE SOLVED
Chapter 37
Various names of people associated with PERQs
Note from Chris Lamb:
“My stepdad worked for 3RCC back in the ’80-’82 timeframe; The first
“real” computer I ever used and learned on was a PERQ, tutored by him twice a week at “RIDC” - Three Rivers’ “Advanced Development Group’s”
location; I must be the youngest (23) and longest running PERQ fanatic on the planet (10 years!); I have two PERQ-1s and a “t2” that is shipping from Pgh tomorrow; I have TONS of floppies, literature, manuals, and schematics;
I’ve got an official PERQ t-shirt on my wall at home (those are almost as rare as color displays! :-)” [CL, in message to WvH on May 27, 1991]
37.1 Individuals:
• Bob Amber - wrote MPOS Users Guide, 1982 at 3RCC
• Miles Barrel - wrote a lot of the later microcode.
• Chuck Beckett (3RCC) wrote project description for TCPOS (IP/TCP for POS) titled “IP/TCP for POS Descriptopn” on April 5, 1982.
• Steve Clark - an engineer at PERQ, migrated to either MegaScan or Mars (check notes). Wrote the calculator program (calc).
• K. Cochran - ICL Dalkeith, write Rs232 test software
• Ellen Colwell
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174CHAPTER 37. VARIOUS NAMES OF PEOPLE ASSOCIATED WITH PERQS
• Robert P. Colwell - co-authored the “PERQ Color Display Concept Document”, July, 1982
• Richard Cox - president of Accent Systems during time when the Max-Pro environment was being sold.
• Ed Fredkin
• Jim Gay
• Carol Geyer at PERQ systems (contact for Accent announcement, May 15, 1984), 412-335-0900
• A. Hanzawa - did programming for PERQ Tetris, 1989
• Lee Harris - assigned to prepare burn-in software
• Jeff Howell
• Rich Huber - Used to program the test system used to manufacture PERQs and now works for Brian Rosen at Mars. Had a running PERQ as of December, 1992 (according to Brian Rosen).
• K. Hughes - ICL Delkeith, worked on RS232 test program
• Bill Hulley - designed fixture for setting time of day clock
• I.M. Elliot (testcontrol.pas)
• Kelly F. Hickel (Accent Systems) - modified MBUS.Pas
• Horst (?) - “There was this guy named Horst (I can’t remember his last name), who was a CMU guy into ADA. He was hired by Siemens Research, who co-operated with CMU on ADA projects, including a start at ADA for ACCENT. Horst didn’t do the work, but another CMU grad student was hired by Siemens to work for Horst did it.”
[Brian Rosen, mailing list, Jan. 5, 1993]
• Sandeep Johar - Wrote design document for Autologic Development project titled “PERQ Interface Design” (the req. document details the configuration under which the PERQ communicates with the main-frame).
• Dirk Kalp
37.1. INDIVIDUALS: 175
• Brian Koma at Burston-Marsteller (contact for Accent announcement, May 15, 1984), 412-456-2500. What was Burston-Marsteller? An authorized dealer?
• J. Stanley Kriz - co-authored the “PERQ Color Display Concept Doc-ument”, designed the Kriz tablet, went on to MegaScan.
• Art Lim
• C. Lindsay (testcontrol.pas)
• J.M. Loveluck & F.R.A. Hopgood, from Rutherford Appleton Lab, SERC, wrote “The ICL/Three Rivers PERQ and Distributed Interac-tive Computing”, April, 1983
• Ed Maples
• Brad Myers - Author of the a lot of the PERQ’s graphics software; as of Dec. 1992, he had a PERQ (according to Brian Rosen).
• K.”KING of TETRIS”.Nakemura - Supervised writing of PERQ Tetris, 1989
• Joe Novak
• Geoff Potter
• George Robertson - Worked on IP/TCP for POS around D.6
• Brian Rosen - Creator of the PERQ.
• Joe Schmidt - ICL
• Kwok W. Sheh - wrote some PERQ microcode and a tribute to that uCode.
• David Stoner - co-authored the “PERQ Color Display Concept Docu-ment”
• (?) Stoney
• John Strait - Wrote a LOT of the PERQ software and SIM (Syn-chronous Register Transfer Simulator). A lot of the software he wrote was low-level coding, such as microcode. It appears that he and Brian Rosen wrote most of the original PERQ microcode. John Strait wrote Prose.
176CHAPTER 37. VARIOUS NAMES OF PEOPLE ASSOCIATED WITH PERQS
• “John Strait was the original compiler guru, most of the language constructs are his work. He was a Pascal purist, and was always trying to keep extensions and changes to a minimum.” [Brian Rosen, mailing list, Jan. 6, 1993]
• Keith Tarvido (Accent Systems) wrote part of MBUS.Pas
• M.J. Tough - ICL Dalkeith, worked on confidence test shell (testcon-trol.pas) in 1982
• Tim Taylor
• Bob Tysarczyk
• Terry Vavra - “Terry Vavra did lots of silly artwork and icons and such.
His machine at 3RCC’s Advanced Development office had a coin slot on it, and some silly stickers and such. Brian may tell us what Terry’s job title was, but from what I gather, it was mostly doing silly drawings and stuff! (He did the icons for PerqMan.)” [CL, Dec. 30, 1992]
• “Terry was a technician who was very creative. He worked for engi-neering and advanced development for several years. He was indeed a wiz at cobbling up icons and silly pictures. We did keep him busy building hardware, but he would come in extra hours to play.” [BR, mailing list, Jan. 4, 1993]
• Andy Verostic
• Tony Vezza
• T.J. Watson (testcontrol.pas)
• V. Wilson (testcontrol.pas)
• Ken Young
• Dale (?) - ICL
• John S. (?) in Chelmsford (England?)
• Fred (?) in Chelmsford (England?)
• REH (?) revised calc program