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zx8080 • today at 12:53 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

It's _very_ hard to believe some company to simply "clone the mainframe" into chip. Mind sharing any link to this effort?


Replies

vincent-manis • today at 1:41 AM

When Xerox established PARC, they asked the assembled scientists what computer they wanted. The majority view was a DEC PDP-10 KA10, with the BBN memory management unit that let it run Tenex (the ancestor of DEC TOPS-20). Xerox couldn't really buy a competitor's mainframe, so they built MAXC (maximum access computer), which was a complete emulation of the Tenex machines.