archive-name: multics/general

11/14/94 THVV Changed the top part to Q&A format.
01/27/95 THVV Added date that archives were last checked.
03/07/95 THVV Information from Jerry Saltzer.
03/16/95 THVV Added URL for Multics info page.
04/16/95 THVV Added URL for Multics info pages in England.
05/22/95 THVV Added URL for Multics info pages in California.
09/11/96 THVV Short version

================================================================= 
This is the short version of the Multics FAQ.  See the Multics web sites
for detailed information about Multics, its builders, and its history.
Please post updates to alt.os.multics or mail to <thvv@best.com>
=================================================================
Q) What is the purpose of this group?
A) This group is for the discussion of the Multics operating system.
   Discussion sometimes strays onto topics of interest to Multicians, e.g.
      - Honeywell hardware architecture
      - CTSS, DTSS and other ancestors
      - Honeywell management mistakes and if-onlys
      - PRIMOS, GCOS Timesharing, UNIX, and other cousins and descendants  
   For discussions of the history of other operating systems, try 
   alt.folklore.computers or the groups dedicated to these systems.

   alt.os.multics is a public unmoderated newsgroup with an estimated 
   readership of thousands.  If you have a comment of limited interest, 
   please use e-mail instead.
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Q) How can I receive alt.os.multics via mail?
A) Send email to majordomo@oakland.edu with the following line in the body 
   of your message (please leave the Subject: line blank):
      subscribe multics your_full_name <your_internet_address>
   for example:
      subscribe multics Jeff Marraccini <jeff@oakland.edu>
   (some folks report trouble posting via this route)
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Q) What other sources are available on-line to find out more about Multics?
A1) Lane A. Robert <lar@usl.edu> archives this group in 
      ftp://pc.usl.edu/pub/multics/alt.os.multics

A2) The collected System-M Forum transactions from the multics@oakland.edu 
    (alt.os.multics) mailing list are now available via  
       ftp://vela.acs.oakland.edu/pub/multicsw
    Jeff Marraccini also archives monthly traffic from this newsgroup there  
    in Unix compressed format files.  (vela's address is 141.210.10.2)  

A3) Jeff loaded one of Oakland's Gopher servers with articles from the 
    archives.  Articles are organized chronologically.
    To link or access the server from Gopher or WWW:
       gopher://gopher.acs.oakland.edu:70/11/Network Services & Databases/USENET News/alt.os.multics Archives

A4) Stan Zanarotti (srz@mit.edu) has created a Multics information page on 
    the World Wide Web.  It contains a GIF of the Multics logo, and current 
    copies of the FAQ from this newsgroup.  The URL is
	http://www.mit.edu:8001/afs/net/user/srz/www/multics.html

A5) Paul Green's Multics archive table of contents is at
        ftp://ftp.stratus.com/pub/vos/multics/multics.html
    It lists his Multics Virtual Memory paper, as well as
    examples of Multics PL/I programs.
    
A6) There is a large set of Multics Web pages available at
         http://www.best.com/~thvv/multics.html
    including hypertext versions of the FAQ files, the 250K Multics
    Glossary, papers, stories, and pictures of Multicians and 6180s.
    There are about 50 pages and 40 images.
    
    Paul Green provides this information at Stratus at
        ftp://ftp.stratus.com/pub/vos/multics/tvv/multics.html
    (If you get a strange message from Netscape about passwords,
    it means that you need to define your mail address in the prefs.)
    
    Dave Vinograd mirrors the Multics info in England at 
        http://www.city.ac.uk/~sh392/multics/multics.html
================================================================= 
Q) What was Multics?
A) Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) was a 
timesharing operating system begun in 1965 and still in use today.  The 
system was started as a joint project by MIT Project MAC, Bell 
Telephone Laboratories, and GE.  Prof. F. J. Corbato of MIT led the 
project.  Bell Labs withdrew from the development effort in 1969, and 
later GE sold its computer business to Honeywell, which continued 
Multics development and offered Multics as a commercial product.  At 
the peak there were almost 100 Multics sites.
 
Multics ran on special expensive CPU hardware which provided a 
segmented, paged, ring-structured virtual memory.  The system was a 
symmetric multiprocessor with shared physical and virtual memory.  The 
operating system was programmed in PL/I.

(See the web sites for more)