History: How did Forth get its stacks 4023

Nuts. Thank you - I was thinking about our XDS machines. Data Machines might be right, though I remember a company named Decision Control being involved somewhere.

The 'D' in the DAS series buttemblers was reputed to mean "Data." I mostly worked with DASMR (Data buttembler Macro Relocatable.) I think an earlier one was called DAS-8A. The '8' probably referred to the new feature of allowing 8 character symbols, rather than the previous limit of 6.

I worked for Taylor Instrument Company, who sold a lot of these computers in process control systems. We made major changes and improvements to VORTEX, their real-time operating system, and renamed it TMX (Taylor Mulbreastasking Executive. VORTEX was Varian Omnitask Real Time Executive, or something like that? It's been a long time.)

Varian sold the business to Sperry Univac, who wanted to get into the minicomputer business. It wasn't too successful, since Sperry wanted to mbutt produce them, and the customer base mostly wanted one-of-a-kind solutions. They eventually sold the business to Second Source Computers (SSCI), who had been making third-party parts and components for them since the Varian days.

I helped SSCI form a joint venture with Taylor to supply and support both the computers and the Taylor software, and ran their Rochester, NY office until they decided to get out of the business (process control made them nervous) and Taylor (then part of ABB) bought it back. I went with it for a while, then back to my own business.

-- Al Balmer Sun City, AZ