[inforoots] Re: [CAL TSS]

[Paul McJones]

On March 15, Michael Albaugh commented:

    1) there was at least one other CDC 6X00 OS. Called CAL TSS it was
    an early (_the_ early?) capability-based OS. I have several of the
    manuals, if I did not already donate them to the museum.

On March 16, Peter Capek commented:

    I recall a presentation - but at this point none of the details -
    about a project at Berkeley to develop something called CALIDOSCOPE
    - CAL Improved Design Of SCOPE. The name Dave Hussey sticks with me,
    as that of one of the key designers. I wonder if this evolved into
    CAL TSS. The presentation I heard was probably at a meeting of the
    6x00 user organization, called VIM.

That say day, Michael replied:

    Not in any sense of the word that I would use. CALIDOSCOPE was
    esentially SCOPE that had been "breathed on". CAL TSS was a "clean
    sheet of paper"

I was a student at Berkeley and an employee of the campus Computer 
Center from 1967 to 1971. Originally I worked on SCOPE utilities, 
reporting to Dave Hussey; later I joined the CAL TSS team, which was led 
by a series of people including Butler Lampson, Howard Sturgis, and Jim 
Gray. Michael is correct: CALIDOSCOPE grew directly out of CDC's SCOPE 
operating system, whereas CAL TSS was a "clean-sheet", 
capability-oriented design, which was described in this paper:

Butler W. Lampson and Howard E. Sturgis.
Reflections on an operating system design.
Communications of the ACM, 19(5):251–265, January 1976.
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/360051.360074
http://www.research.microsoft.com/lampson/15-ReflectionsOnOS/Abstract.html.

I've put together a digital archive of the design, programmer, and 
end-user documentation for CAL TSS -- see 
http://www.mcjones.org/CalTSS/CalTSS.pdf . Michael, if you have 
documents not linked to from CalTSS.pdf I'd love to hear from you.


Paul McJones
paul at mcjones.org