Comment by vincent-manis
1 day ago
When Xerox established PARC, they asked the assembled scientists what computer they wanted. The majority view was a DEC PDP-10 KA10, with the BBN memory management unit that let it run Tenex (the ancestor of DEC TOPS-20). Xerox couldn't really buy a competitor's mainframe, so they built MAXC (maximum access computer), which was a complete emulation of the Tenex machines.
very apt that xerox parc was full of tenex engineers!
>MAXC (maximum access computer), which was a complete emulation of the Tenex machines.
Compuserve also had a software dependency on the PDP-10 and Decsystem 20, and when those machines were no longer available they bought a company making clones so they could continue to manufacture them for themselves. The company they bought, Microsolutions, was Mark Cuban's first startup.
making clones of mainframes (IBM's) had been a big area of intellectual property litigation, but also facing monopolization investigations, IBM had to allow them. They were referred to as "plug compatibles".