31 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
31 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>Foonly</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../F.html" title="F"/><link rel="previous" href="fool-file.html" title="fool file"/><link rel="next" href="footprint.html" title="footprint"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Foonly</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="fool-file.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">F</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="footprint.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="Foonly"/><dt xmlns="" id="Foonly"><b>Foonly</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> 1. The <a href="../P/PDP-10.html"><i class="glossterm">PDP-10</i></a> successor that was to have been
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built by the Super Foonly project at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence
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Laboratory along with a new operating system. (The name itself came from
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FOO NLI, an error message emitted by a PDP-10 assembler at SAIL meaning
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“<span class="quote">FOO is Not a Legal Identifier</span>”. The intention was to
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leapfrog from the old <a href="../D/DEC.html"><i class="glossterm">DEC</i></a> timesharing system SAIL
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was then running to a new generation, bypassing TENEX which at that time
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was the ARPANET standard. ARPA funding for both the Super Foonly and the
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new operating system was cut in 1974. Most of the design team went to DEC
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and contributed greatly to the design of the PDP-10 model KL10. </p></dd><dd><p> 2. The name of the company formed by Dave Poole, one of the
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principal Super Foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's more colorful
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personalities. Many people remember the parrot which sat on Poole's
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shoulder and was a regular companion.</p></dd><dd><p> 3. Any of the machines built by Poole's company. The first was the
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F-1 (a.k.a. Super Foonly), which was the computational engine used to
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create the graphics in the movie <i class="citetitle">TRON</i>. The F-1 was
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the fastest PDP-10 ever built, but only one was ever made. The effort
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drained Foonly of its financial resources, and the company turned towards
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building smaller, slower, and much less expensive machines. Unfortunately,
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these ran not the popular <a href="../T/TOPS-20.html"><i class="glossterm">TOPS-20</i></a> but a TENEX
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variant called Foonex; this seriously limited their market. Also, the
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machines shipped were actually wire-wrapped engineering prototypes
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requiring individual attention from more than usually competent site
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personnel, and thus had significant reliability problems. Poole's
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legendary temper and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did not help
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matters. By the time DEC's “<span class="quote">Jupiter Project</span>” followon to the
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PDP-10 was cancelled in 1983, Foonly's proposal to build another F-1 was
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eclipsed by the <a href="../M/Mars.html"><i class="glossterm">Mars</i></a>, and the company never quite
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recovered. See the <a href="../M/Mars.html"><i class="glossterm">Mars</i></a> entry for the continuation
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and moral of this story.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="fool-file.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../F.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="footprint.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">fool file </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> footprint</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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