Re: Not history, Privilege Levels Below User

On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 10:17:36 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:

On the other hand, if Multics hadn't been so late, and so closely tied
to expensive hardware that wasn't byte addressable and was already
running out of address bits, who knows how much of its other features
might have been more widely adopted.

Multics did finally reach production, and was still available for purchase
into the 1980s. There is a brochure from Honeywell (who took over the GE
computer business), dated 1982, that touts its features. And considering
it had been something like 15 years since development commenced at that
point, it doesn’t look dated at all. What other platforms from that time
had integrated graphics, text processing and database support?

I heard somewhere that Honeywell had no idea what to do with this MULTICS
thing. They priced it at something obscene (seven figures) to put off
people buying it, but some customers stayed loyal, regardless.