I spent 3/4 of my Undergraduate life on MTS, and Forum was basic the social hub of a large chunk of nerdy students (myself included). The fact that that MTS VT100 and IBM terminals were all over the place (Literally Terminals - great, big 20 pound CRT monstrosities that had been in place for 10+ years) - meant you could login for just a few minutes anywhere on campus - kind of a precursor to todays mobility (as long as you were on campus).
Being able to print your big 500 page print job on the Central Laser Printer, and having it wait for you in your output box (I was XGEC), was also pretty awesome - and it provided 24x7 jobs for the people working in the Computing Center.
It's kind of a shame that I never really used/learned the system the same way I did with Unix - I really treated it like a large BBS environment, that I could also do some programming homework on.
But, time moved on, and by 1992/1993, MTS was starting to show it's age, and our researchers and faculty were becoming increasingly annoyed at the "IT Managers" who literally refused to take direction - as though the system was run for their* benefit, instead of the campus benefit.
So, in a day remembered as Bloody Tuesday at SFU - the entire Sr. Management team was publicly terminated, and the remaining employees were told they had exactly one year to replace all of the MTS (and IBM 3090 (3081?) system with Unix systems and NFS file storage.
One year later, we entered the brave world of Unix - which, while I have fond memories of MTS, was a far, far better system to prepare undergraduates for the world that awaited them.
Being able to print your big 500 page print job on the Central Laser Printer, and having it wait for you in your output box (I was XGEC), was also pretty awesome - and it provided 24x7 jobs for the people working in the Computing Center.
It's kind of a shame that I never really used/learned the system the same way I did with Unix - I really treated it like a large BBS environment, that I could also do some programming homework on.
But, time moved on, and by 1992/1993, MTS was starting to show it's age, and our researchers and faculty were becoming increasingly annoyed at the "IT Managers" who literally refused to take direction - as though the system was run for their* benefit, instead of the campus benefit.
So, in a day remembered as Bloody Tuesday at SFU - the entire Sr. Management team was publicly terminated, and the remaining employees were told they had exactly one year to replace all of the MTS (and IBM 3090 (3081?) system with Unix systems and NFS file storage.
One year later, we entered the brave world of Unix - which, while I have fond memories of MTS, was a far, far better system to prepare undergraduates for the world that awaited them.