The Mainframe

You've found it - this is THE MAINFRAME.

I've always had a distinct interest in old, proper "microcomputers" and mainframes. They feel very much like an untouchable realm of history for computing, where most of our concepts of "what a computer is" come from in some form or another. This is a portal to my writeups, thoughts, etc. on various mainframes and microcomputers as I play around with them.

Multics

Synopsis

Multics, althought not the first "timesharing" mainframe system around, was definitely influential for its time. Although a critical failure commercially, lobbed to multiple vendors over the years to try to squeeze some commercial value from it, it maintains a very small but dedicated group of enthusiasts, especially now that the code is Open Source.

I heavily enjoy some of the fundamental concepts Multics proposes, and much of its original documentation is now freely available, provided by archivists.

(Plus, it's always fun to roleplay that rather than having an ADHD machine full of infinite distractions, your only computing system costs dollars per hour and has no GUI.)

The Multics shrine can be found here.