Foonly
1. The PDP-10 successor that was to have been built by the Super Foonly project
at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory along with a new operating
system. The intention was to leapfrog from the old DEC time-sharing system SAIL
was then running to a new generation, bypassing TENEX which at that time was the
ARPANET standard. ARPA funding for both the Super Foonly and the new operating
system was cut in 1974. Most of the design team went to DEC and contributed
greatly to the design of the PDP-10 model KL10.
2. The name of the company formed by Dave Poole, one of the principal Super
Foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's more colourful personalities. Many
people remember the parrot which sat on Poole's shoulder and was a regular
companion.
3. Any of the machines built by Poole's company. The first was the F-1 (a.k.a.
Super Foonly), which was the computational engine used to create the graphics in
the movie "TRON". The F-1 was the fastest PDP-10 ever built, but only one was
ever made. The effort drained Foonly of its financial resources, and the company
turned toward building smaller, slower, and much less expensive machines.
Unfortunately, these ran not the popular TOPS-20 but a TENEX variant called
Foonex; this seriously limited their market. Also, the machines shipped were
actually wire-wrapped engineering prototypes requiring individual attention from
more than usually competent site personnel, and thus had significant reliability
problems. Poole's legendary temper and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did
not help matters. By the time of the Jupiter project cancellation in 1983,
Foonly's proposal to build another F-1 was eclipsed by the Mars, and the company
never quite recovered. See the Mars entry for the continuation and moral of this
story.
[Jargon File]
Nearby terms:
FOOL « fool file « Fools' Lisp « Foonly »
FOOP » foot-net » footprint
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