On 8/23/26 03:47, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late 1960s kind
of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange" system, maybe for
inventory or check-processing?).
I think this is the company which was the carrier involved in Clifford
Stoll's "Cuckoo's Egg" story. Nit picking time billing lead to finding
a hacker guy.
My friend Ron Vivier who was a co-worker before the issue moved to the
Bay area and is mentioned in Cliff's book. He worked at Microdata in
Irvine when I worked with him and moved north and went to work for tymshare.
BTW, the timesharing model sucks if you're forced into it. Never ending
charges for service vs. having a system. In the early 80s i went to
work with a company which had a timesharing business they'd inherited.
We had minicomputer which at the time for cost considerations and needs
allowed for sharing the resources. But some companies were predatory
and not nice with rates or services.
Our business went away when the PC version of the Pick Operating system
came out and the customers drifted away onto their own owned machines.
FWIW one customer which had been on our system for years was Western
Digital
thanks
Jim
