[TUHS] UNIX on Tandem

[Heinz Lycklama via TUHS]

I do remember that Doug Bayer and Alan Usas worked on
the UNIX system on the Tandem computer system in the
late 1970's at BTL after I had left BTL to join ISC in mid-1978,
but I do not recall all the details of that system. Doug and I
developed the MERT system at BTL in the mid 1970's. I also
had occasion to re-acquaint with Alan during his time at
Tandem in the mid 1990's where he had continued to
develop UNIX software on the latest Tandem hardware and
software at the time, and I was involved in various consulting
projects for Tandem.

Heinz

On 1/9/2026 2:07 AM, Jonathan Gray via TUHS wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 08, 2026 at 10:59:19PM -0800, Tom Lyon via TUHS wrote:
>> Ran across this citation today.  Anyone ever seen this paper?  Known of the
>> system?   I'm pretty sure they're talking about Tandem(TM), not just
>> generic tandem.
>>
>> A Distributed UNIX System-The Tandem Experiment. A. M. Usas, Proc Natl
>> Electron Conf, 34 (October 1980), pp 16-8.
> Didn't find the paper, but did find:
>
> "The UNIX operating system environment has found wide use in a variety
> of time sharing, word processing, and data processing applications.
> Until recently, it was only available on single processor computer
> systems but now has been successfully emulated by D. L. Bayer and
> A. M. Usas on a nonstop multiprocessor computer system built by the Tandem
> Computer Company"
>
> G. Bergland, "An Experimental Telecommunications Test Bed"
> IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 1, no. 2, pp 322-326
> February 1983, doi: 10.1109/JSAC.1983.1145923
> https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1145923
> https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1466094/download-documents?artifactId=rWIj0W0HCvPrieJC6vvVEuPvLJcNtW8P3UfHNTXqn4Kq5QZxf_KBc44
>
> more papers mentioned in BSTJ:
> C on the Tandem 16. A. M. Usas,
> Proc Tandem Users Group Convention, San Diego, California,
> September 15-17, 1980
>
> A Model for a Tandem Software Development System. A. M. Usas,
> Proc Tandem Users Group Convention, San Diego, California,
> September 15-17, 1980.
>
> from 'Bell Laboratories Talks and Papers, 1979', snippets on Google Books:
> Bayer DL, The Tandem 16 Computer System and the Tandem/Unix Project
> Usas AM, Emulation of Unix on a Tandem 16
>
> https://cs.brown.edu/people/faculty/ausas/
> mentions Alan worked at Tandem after Bell Labs
>
> "the list of versions of the Portable C Compiler (as of April 1979) includes:
> 	Data General Nova
> 	Honeywell 6000
> 	IBM System /360 and /370
> 	Intel 8086
> 	Interdata 8/32
> 	PDP11
> 	Tandem 16
> 	VAX11/780"
> from tuhs Documentation/Papers/lions_PCCpass2_jun1979.pdf