Phoenix (computer)

Phoenix (February 1973 ­– September 30 1995) 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.cite web|url=http://www.michaelgrant.dsl.pipex.com/phx.html|title=phx.cam.ac.uk|date=2007-01-23|author=Michael Seán Grant]

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 mebibyte 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. [cite news|publisher=University of Cambridge Computing Service|url=http://lijohn.org./cs/newsletter/2003/nl215/general.html|title=Newsletter #215|date=2003]

The IBM-supplied 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. [cite paper|title=Parrot — A replacement for TCAM|author=P. Hazel and A.J.M. Stoneley|date=April 1976|format=PDF|url=http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk./techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-5.pdf|work=Technical reports|publisher=University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory|id=UCAM-CL-TR-5]

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 TSO. 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. Some of the Phoenix authors were familiar with the Unix operating system, and, as a result, the Phoenix command interpreter acquired some of the features of Unix shells (for example "here-document"s - inline input files).Fact|date=January 2008 Note added by Philip Hazel: That is not true. The Phoenix command interpreter was based on that of the Titan Multiple Access System [cite web
url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_%28computer%29|title=The Titan Multiple Access system] which had inline input files and was in service from 1967. I doubt whether anybody in Cambridge knew of Unix in 1972, when Phoenix was being developed by Barry Landy. The famous ACM paper [cite web|url=http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/cacm.html
title=The UNIX Time-Sharing System] that introduced Unix to the world was not published until 1974. Also, Steve Bourne, who wrote the Bourne Shell for Unix, was at Cambridge in the 1960s and early 1970s. It seems likely that inline documents in Unix also derived from the Titan command interpreter.

By 1973 Phoenix had a thousand megabytes of disk space.Fact|date=January 2008 In 1982 it was upgraded to an IBM 3081D, and in 1989 to a 3084Q.Fact|date=January 2008

The system was finally decommissioned 24 years after its installation, on 1995-09-30 at 09:17 (by its own clock).cite web|url=http://semiramis.org.uk./rrw/software/misc/wrengroggs/groggs.html|date=1998-04-07|author=Richard Watts|title=An introduction to RGTP GROGGS]

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." [cite news|work=New Scientist|title=Feedback|date=1999-09-11|issue=2203|pages=92|url=http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16322037.500.html|author=Richard Gibbons]

The chief recreational activity on Phoenix was the playing of sixteen 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". [cite book|title=The Inform Designer's Manual|author=Graham Nelson|chapter=A short history of interactive fiction|pages=347|date=2001|publisher=Dan Sanderson|isbn=0971311900]

"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".

Phoenix also hosted a lively bulletin board 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.cite web|url=http://www.groggs.group.cam.ac.uk./|title=GROGGS — General Purpose Reverse-Ordered Gossip Gathering System|author=Ian Jackson and Martin Hardcastle|date=2004-09-29]

Phoenix inspired great affection in its users, to such an extent that a wake was held on 1995-09-01 to mourn its passing. A University newsgroup called "ucam.phx.nostalgia" was also created for reminiscences.

References

External links

* [http://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/phoenix.html Phoenix's influence on interactive fiction]
* [http://www.semiramis.org.uk/phoenix/ A record of the last moments of Phoenix, and some modern derivatives of its software]
* [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/UoCCL/misc/EDSAC99/history.html A history of the Computer Laboratory]
* [http://www.michael-grant.me.uk/phx.html An appreciation of Phoenix, by a user]
* [http://www.mit.edu/afs/sipb/user/marthag/text/humor/news/help Some of Phoenix's quirky help messages]
* [http://www.geocities.com/j_r_partington/phoenix/phx.html The Phoenix papers] by J. R. Partington.