
Origins and development of TOPS-20 (1996) - jsnell
http://tenex.opost.com/hbook.html
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dano
Open the article and search for "Escape Recognition, Noise Words, Help" which
was encapsulated into the COMND JSYS in TOPS-10 and TOPS-20.

One of the most key things about Escape Recognition on TOPS-20 was that it
could used by novices and experts alike. Novices could type a question mark
(?) at any point, even before logging in, and the available commands would be
displayed. An expert could also type a question mark at any point in a complex
command line to display that pesky option that he'd otherwise forgotten about.

TOPS-20 occupied entirely too much of my time during college. This 1982
Rolling Stone article about LOTS-A and its users at Stanford captured the
feeling well

[http://www.designersnotebook.com/Scrapbook/Hackers_in_Paradi...](http://www.designersnotebook.com/Scrapbook/Hackers_in_Paradise/hackers_in_paradise.htm)

If you're interested in reading about the COMND JSYS, see chapter 5 of this
Macro Assembler book from 1980.

ftp://kermit.columbia.edu/kermit/dec20/assembler-guide.txt

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ggm
I only did TOPS-10. It was interesting to read about it, in the context of a
world view which went (considerably) further.

36 bit was my dawn. I'm still slightly freaked we had such variances in word
and byte size. things you can do in sixbit chars.. why DEC went there. And the
whole UUO thing. Mind. Blown.

