[TUHS] C from 1980 binaries

[Clem Cole via TUHS]

Fair. Did it have a disk of any type and was the local OS?  Was it really
standalone?  I didn't think there was room in the case for anything else.
I believe DEC created the GT44 which I believe could but I never saw one in
the wild.

FWIW. I also had a GT40 with an 11/05  CPU with a Unibus, but  no local
storage or an OS like DOS-11 or RT11. My experience was it had a 960 cps
serial connection to its mothership, our Unix system in my case or to
an ASR33 with its papertape reader.  In our case we had a runtime we used
for the Graphics code which I wrote part of as part Bob Sproull's graphics
course.  It was similar to the ones for 3-Rivers GPD which had dedicated
11/20 and a connection to CS-Front End so they usually used one of the
PDP-10s, C.mmp or one of the Unix systems as a mothership.

In my case I used the Unix V6 C compiler, as and led. I wrote a loader for
what GT40 ROM wanted, although I've completely forgotten and of those
details.

Also I know that when when Jack wrote Moonlander, he was using a PDP-10 for
his development and downloaded to the GT40.  I think he was using PPT. He
told me once how he did the development, but I dont remember that detail,
although I think he was using macro-11x and must have had some sort of load
system.    All editing, however, was done on the PDP-10.

The Terack was sold as a complete 'PC' if will.  Not needing anything else
to support it.


Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual

On Sun, Nov 1, 2026 at 8:34 PM Bakul Shah <bakul at iitbombay.org> wrote:

> On Nov 1, 2026, at 5:13 PM, Clem Cole via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> >
> > The 8510/A was basically an LSI-11 with some graphics hardware, released
> in
> > 1977.  The Terak was arguably the world’s first true standalone graphics
> > workstation.
>
> In 1976 or so I wrote some code to play with graphics. It was to simulate
> a fly-through a wire-frame dodecahedron to be displayed on a GT40 (this
> one also had the lunar lander program). I do not recall now if my code
> was cross-compiled on a TOPS-10 system or compiled right on the GT40 but
> it certainly seemed like a standalone graphics computer....