I worked at Gould CSD in Urbana on the Powernode Unix kernel from '86-'88 and knew the machines were descendants of SEL machines, but that is about it. The ECL based logic was named "firebreather" for a reason. They were the fastest thing at the time. Being a computer company in Urbana Illinois, we all joked about being where the HAL 9000 would eventually be born. It was my first real job out of college, so I had a blast, right up until the company laid off a large portion of our office in a single day. I think I still have a t-shirt which says "Gould lost $300M and all I got was this lousy t-shirt". I wasn't on the list, but I left shortly thereafter. The people I worked with were all top notch and I missed them after leaving.
--tom On 11/6/20 1:37 PM, Bob Smith via cctalk wrote: > My memories of SEL beginnings are dusty. and rusty. I recall a bunch > of their systems being used in science related efforts, beecause of > the high IO capability. At the time, for NASA and others, it was the > ideal platform for data collection. Not a bad compute capability - > many other systems in that space could do compute efforts more > quickly, but the none could match data IO for years. iirc, this was in > both the 16 and 32 bit lines. > I alwo recall when some folks from DEC VAX et al efforts left and > joined SEL - yep there is some back story there. > bob > > On Thu, Nov 5, 2020 at 2:35 PM Eric Moore via cctalk > <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: >> Hello, I have pulled together a website with links to resources and >> information on SEL, or Systems Engineering Laboratories. >> >> http://mnembler.com >> >> SEL was a computer manufacturer in the 60s and 70s which later was acquired >> by Gould and then Encore. They made many major innovations and were >> instrumental in the success of the Apollo program. >> >> The website is still a work in progress, but I did want to share it with >> yall. >> >> -Eric
