TICKET and TOKEN, hosts 23 and 26, XKL hardware, 1997

8 images

Name                  Size  Description
------------------   -----  -----------
../                  [DIR]  Information about Tymshare
Conductor.jpg        37.7K  Bottom of rack is 1/2-inch 6250 bpi tape, top of rack is Sun workstation.
Host23back.jpg       33.2K  Each XKL CPU has 4 ethernets and 4 SCSI busses.
TicketFront.jpg      15.5K  System 23, two single 4mm DAT and two 4mm stacker tape drives.
VT420Consoles.jpg    40.1K  Ticket (23) is primary, Token (26) is backup
FrontView.jpg        24.9K  Token on left, Conductor in middle, Ticket on right.
xkl-murdock2.jpg     27.7K  Decommissioned.


.. parent directory

Before 1996:

TTS/PAPER (the Trouble Ticket System) ran on two mainframes from
Digital Equipment Corporation.  These PDP-10 computers, model
KL-1090, were accessable via the Tymnet Packet Network as
Tymshare hosts 23 and 26.  Each computer was the size of 5
refrigerators, and had a string of disks that looked like 18
washing machines.  Their power supplies produced +5 volts at 200
amps (non-switching) making them expensive to operate.

The PDP-10s ran TYMCOM-X, an offshoot of TOPS-10 modified for Tymshare.
The application was written in FORTRAN and used the 1022 database.

After 1996:

The DEC PDP-10s were replaced by PDP-10 clones from XKL PLC.
They were accessable via TCP/IP as ticket.tymnet.com and
token.tymnet.com, by both TELNET and HTTP.  A low-end
workstation from Sun Microsystems was used as a telnet gateway;
it accepted X.25 logins from the Tymnet network and forwarded
them to "ticket" and/or "token".  (The workstation is labeled
"conductor" in the pictures above.)

The XKL systems ran TOPS-20.  The application was ported to a newer
version of the FORTRAN compiler, and still used the 1022 database.

After 1998:

Both systems have been put into storage, in the hopes that
someday they may be useful again.

<Joe.Smith@wcom.com> 408-533-6220