Phoenix (computer)
Encyclopedia
Phoenix was an IBM
mainframe computer
at Cambridge University
's Computer Laboratory
. "Phoenix/MVS" was also the name of the computer's operating system
, written in-house by Computer Laboratory members. Its DNS
hostname was phx.cam.ac.uk.
of store, to double the amount of storage that the machine had. The petition was accepted and the extra store was delivered in September 1973.
(TCAM) and communications controller were replaced in 1975 by a system, called Parrot, that was created locally by the staff of the Computer Laboratory, comprising their own software and a PDP-11
complex. Their goal in doing so was to provide a better user interface than was available with a standard IBM system, alongside greater flexibility, reliability, and efficiency. They wanted to support 300 terminals. The initial system, supplied in 1972, comprised the PDP-11 emulating an IBM 2703 transmission control unit, which TCAM communicated with just as though it were a 2703. The PDP-11 was used instead of a bank of 2703s because for a projected 300 terminals a bank of 2703s was not scalable, too expensive, and inadequate for the Computing Service's needs, since it required paper tape readers and card punches as well. Even this solution proved to be unsatisfactory, and in 1975 TCAM was replaced by Parrot, with 200 terminals connected to the PDP-11, of which 80 could be simultaneously active. For full technical details of Parrot, see the technical report by Hazel and Stoneley.
. The initial product of their efforts was a Phoenix command interpreter which completely replaced the TSO command interpreter and was also available as a language for controlling batch job submissions through the use of a single IBM JCL
command to invoke the Phoenix command interpreter. The Phoenix command interpreter was based on that of the Titan Multiple Access System which had inline input files and was in service from 1967.
Steve Bourne, who wrote the Bourne Shell
for Unix, was at Cambridge in the 1960s and early 1970s. It seems likely that some of the Bourne Shell's constructs in Unix also derived from the Titan command interpreter.
GEC's OS4000
JCL was based on the Phoenix command interpreter.
s of disk space. In 1982 it was upgraded to an IBM 3081D, and in 1989 to a 3084Q.
One recreational activity on Phoenix was the playing of interactive fiction
games. Because the games were large and demanded significant machine resources whilst running, they were generally played outside of prime time, when research palled. (The exit message of one game, Fyleet written by Jonathan Partington
in 1985, was "Well go and do some work then".) Other games were Advent (a.k.a. Colossal Cave
), Zork
(a.k.a. Dungeon), and Acheton.
Acheton was created by two Cambridge graduate students, Jon Thackray and David Seal, in 1978–1979, and expanded over the ensuring two years with the aid of Jonathan Partington. It was written with the aid of a game assembler, which, unlike the contemporary ZIL game assembler from Infocom
, was freely available for use by all users of Phoenix between 1980 and 1995.
Several large early British games developed on Phoenix were sold commercially for microcomputers by Acornsoft
and, later, Topologika
. This was comparable to Infocom's contemporaneous commercialisation of the MIT mainframe game Zork
. Many of these games were subsequently translated by Graham Nelson
to run on the Z-Machine
.
The commercial release of Brand X was Philosopher's Quest.
named GROGGS, which fostered the community spirit amongst the machine's users. After Phoenix was decommissioned, GROGGS migrated to a Unix system, and survives to this day.
was held on 1 September 1995 to mourn its passing. A University newsgroup
called "ucam.phx.nostalgia" was also created for reminiscences.
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
mainframe computer
Mainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
at Cambridge University
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
's Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
The Computer Laboratory is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. As of 2007, it employs 35 academic staff, 25 support staff, 35 affiliated research staff, and about 155 research students...
. "Phoenix/MVS" was also the name of the computer's operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
, written in-house by Computer Laboratory members. Its DNS
Domain name system
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...
hostname was phx.cam.ac.uk.
Hardware
The Phoenix system was an IBM 370/165. It was made available for test purposes to 20 selected users, via consoles in the public console room, in February 1973. The following month, the Computing Service petitioned the Computer Board for an extra mebibyteMebibyte
The mebibyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The binary prefix mebi means 220, therefore 1 mebibyte is . The unit symbol for the mebibyte is MiB. The unit was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 2000 and has been accepted for use by all major...
of store, to double the amount of storage that the machine had. The petition was accepted and the extra store was delivered in September 1973.
Communications
The IBM-supplied Telecommunications Access MethodTelecommunications Access Method
Telecommunications Access Method is an access method, in IBM's OS/360 and successors computer operating systems on IBM System/360 and later, that provides access to terminals units within a teleprocessing network....
(TCAM) and communications controller were replaced in 1975 by a system, called Parrot, that was created locally by the staff of the Computer Laboratory, comprising their own software and a PDP-11
PDP-11
The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a succession of products in the PDP series. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many real-time applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years...
complex. Their goal in doing so was to provide a better user interface than was available with a standard IBM system, alongside greater flexibility, reliability, and efficiency. They wanted to support 300 terminals. The initial system, supplied in 1972, comprised the PDP-11 emulating an IBM 2703 transmission control unit, which TCAM communicated with just as though it were a 2703. The PDP-11 was used instead of a bank of 2703s because for a projected 300 terminals a bank of 2703s was not scalable, too expensive, and inadequate for the Computing Service's needs, since it required paper tape readers and card punches as well. Even this solution proved to be unsatisfactory, and in 1975 TCAM was replaced by Parrot, with 200 terminals connected to the PDP-11, of which 80 could be simultaneously active. For full technical details of Parrot, see the technical report by Hazel and Stoneley.
Software
The staff were motivated to write their own system software for the IBM installation as a result of their dissatisfaction with IBM's own interactive command interpreter TSOTime Sharing Option
In computing, Time Sharing Option is an interactive time-sharing environment for IBM mainframe operating systems, including OS/360 MVT, OS/VS2 , MVS, OS/390, and z/OS.- Overview :TSO fulfills a similar purpose to Unix login sessions...
. The initial product of their efforts was a Phoenix command interpreter which completely replaced the TSO command interpreter and was also available as a language for controlling batch job submissions through the use of a single IBM JCL
Job Control Language
Job Control Language is a scripting language used on IBM mainframe operating systems to instruct the system on how to run a batch job or start a subsystem....
command to invoke the Phoenix command interpreter. The Phoenix command interpreter was based on that of the Titan Multiple Access System which had inline input files and was in service from 1967.
Steve Bourne, who wrote the Bourne Shell
Bourne shell
The Bourne shell, or sh, was the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7 and most Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh - which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic link or hard link to a compatible shell - even when more modern shells are used by most users.Developed by Stephen Bourne at AT&T...
for Unix, was at Cambridge in the 1960s and early 1970s. It seems likely that some of the Bourne Shell's constructs in Unix also derived from the Titan command interpreter.
GEC's OS4000
OS4000
OS4000 is a proprietary operating system introduced by GEC Computers Limited in 1977 as the successor to GEC DOS, for its range of GEC 4000 series 16-bit, and later 32-bit, minicomputers...
JCL was based on the Phoenix command interpreter.
Upgrades
By 1973 Phoenix had a thousand megabyteMegabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
s of disk space. In 1982 it was upgraded to an IBM 3081D, and in 1989 to a 3084Q.
Decommissioning
The system was finally decommissioned 24 years after its installation, on 30 September 1995 at 09:17 (by its own clock).Help command
Phoenix/MVS is remembered for the responses that it gave to its HELP command. One such was the response to the command HELP GOD, to which Phoenix/MVS would reply "Deities must be invoked directly and not via Phoenix MVS."Games
| Game | Year | Authors' names (Phoenix login names in parentheses) |
|---|---|---|
| Acheton | 1978 | Jon Thackray (JGT1), David Seal (DJS6), and Jonathan R. Partington Jonathan Partington Jonathan R. Partington is an English mathematician.-Education:Professor Partington was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Trinity College, University of Cambridge, where he completed his PhD thesis entitled "Numerical ranges and the Geometry of Banach Spaces" under the supervision of Béla... (JRP1) |
| Murdac | 1982 | Jon Thackray and Jonathan R. Partington |
| Avon | 1982 | Jon Thackray and Jonathan R. Partington |
| Brand X | 1979 | Jonathan Mestel Jonathan Mestel Andrew Jonathan Mestel is Professor of applied mathematics at Imperial College London who works on magnetohydrodynamics and biological fluid dynamics... (AJM8) and Peter Killworth Peter Killworth Professor Peter D. Killworth was an English scientist known for both his work on oceanography and the study of social networks. A prodigious writer, his published output exceeded 160 scientific papers over the course of his career... (PDK1) |
| Hamil | 1980 | Jonathan R. Partington |
| Quondam | 1980 | Rod Underwood (RU10) |
| Hezarin | 1980 | Steve Tinney, Alex Ship, and Jon Thackray |
| Xeno | unknown | Jonathan Mestel |
| Fyleet | 1985 | Jonathan R. Partington |
| Crobe | 1986 | Jonathan R. Partington |
| Sangraal | 1987 | Jonathan R. Partington |
| Nidus | 1987 | Adam Atkinson (AJFA1) |
| Parc | unknown | (JR26) |
| Xerb | unknown | Andrew Lipson (ASL1) |
| Spycatcher | circa 1988 | Jonathan R. Partington |
One recreational activity on Phoenix was the playing of interactive fiction
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
games. Because the games were large and demanded significant machine resources whilst running, they were generally played outside of prime time, when research palled. (The exit message of one game, Fyleet written by Jonathan Partington
Jonathan Partington
Jonathan R. Partington is an English mathematician.-Education:Professor Partington was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Trinity College, University of Cambridge, where he completed his PhD thesis entitled "Numerical ranges and the Geometry of Banach Spaces" under the supervision of Béla...
in 1985, was "Well go and do some work then".) Other games were Advent (a.k.a. Colossal Cave
Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...
), Zork
Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...
(a.k.a. Dungeon), and Acheton.
Acheton was created by two Cambridge graduate students, Jon Thackray and David Seal, in 1978–1979, and expanded over the ensuring two years with the aid of Jonathan Partington. It was written with the aid of a game assembler, which, unlike the contemporary ZIL game assembler from Infocom
Infocom
Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone....
, was freely available for use by all users of Phoenix between 1980 and 1995.
Several large early British games developed on Phoenix were sold commercially for microcomputers by Acornsoft
Acornsoft
Acornsoft was the software arm of Acorn Computers Ltd, and a major publisher of software for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. As well as games, they also produced a large number of educational titles, extra computer languages and business and utility packages - these included ROM-based word...
and, later, Topologika
Topologika
Topologika Software Ltd is a still-independent British publisher of educational software. Based in Brighton, the company was founded in 1983.Many of its early products were interactive fiction adventure games taken on after Acornsoft was sold to Superior Software who only continued to release their...
. This was comparable to Infocom's contemporaneous commercialisation of the MIT mainframe game Zork
Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...
. Many of these games were subsequently translated by Graham Nelson
Graham Nelson
Graham A. Nelson is a British mathematician and poet and the creator of the Inform design system for creating interactive fiction games. He has also authored several IF games, including the acclaimed Curses and Jigsaw , using the experience of writing Curses in particular to expand the range of...
to run on the Z-Machine
Z-machine
The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions , and could therefore port all its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a...
.
The commercial release of Brand X was Philosopher's Quest.
Bulletin board
Phoenix also hosted a lively bulletin boardBulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
named GROGGS, which fostered the community spirit amongst the machine's users. After Phoenix was decommissioned, GROGGS migrated to a Unix system, and survives to this day.
Wake
Phoenix inspired great affection in its users, to such an extent that a wakeFuneral
A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...
was held on 1 September 1995 to mourn its passing. A University newsgroup
Newsgroup
A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
called "ucam.phx.nostalgia" was also created for reminiscences.
External links
- Phoenix's influence on interactive fiction
- A record of the last moments of Phoenix, and some modern derivatives of its software
- A history of the Computer Laboratory
- An appreciation of Phoenix, by a user
- Some of Phoenix's quirky help messages
- The Phoenix papers by J. R. PartingtonJ. R. PartingtonJames Riddick Partington MBE was a British chemist and historian of chemistry.- Life and work :Partington was born in Bolton, Lancashire and was educated at the University of Manchester, where he obtained First Class Honours...
.