PROJECT HISTORY

Summer 1968 Time sharing project starts. One faculty advisor and 4 computer center programmers, two half time.

December 1968 Layered structure of system chosen, with responsibilities of each layer determined. Major components of ECS system specified. Actual programing begins. 2 persons from computer science department join project unofficially.

Summer 1969 Portions of ECS system and a temporary executive (Bead) completed. A SCOPE simulator and a text editor written. Public demonstration of system, exhibiting editing, compiling and execution of Fortran programs from two teletypes simultaneously. Disk I-O interface and disk/directory system design begun. Several more programmers join the project.

January 1970 Disk I-O interface completed. A temporary program provided which moves entire files between the disk and ECS. System will support nearly 10 users (editing large text files and assembling them), if they cooperate closely on use of ECS space. No file protection between users. Several persons invited from computer science department to use system on an experimental basis.

Summer 1970 Disk/directory system design completed. Programming begun during spring 1970. Most components of ECS system completed. Final drive begun on remaining portions, mostly I-O interfaces. Some redesign and reprogramming of ECS system started. Command processor design starts.

Spring 1971 Disk/directory system and command processor sufficiently completed to permit use of new system. Bead system scrapped. Many components not completed (disk swapping of user processes, accounting and others).

Fall 1971 Accounting completed. Disk swapping of user processes not completed. System difficult to use, partially due to multiplicity of conventions carried over from temporary (Bead) system. Will support at least 15 simultaneous users of BASIC subsystem. ECS size limits number of users, rather than CPU time.

November 1971 Project terminated for lack of funds.