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University of Saskatchewan Computer Museum We exist to acquire, preserve, display, interpret, and celebrate computing history, on behalf of the University of Saskatchewan.

10/08/2026

Throwback Thursday: 40 Years Ago - Home Networking

The October 1986 DCS Newsletter article "Modems for Sale" announced that people could use a university requisition to buy US Robotics Password 300/1200 Hayes-compatible modems from the Technical Services group for $350 ($315 if purchased with a research grant). That is over $800 in 2026 dollars.

There was a warning that DCS was considering doubling the dial-up line speeds to 2400 bps in the future, but these modems would not utilize this faster speed.

For comparison, a common home network plan today in Saskatoon is about 300 Mbps, about 250,000 times faster than the modem.

A 5 Gigabyte file today would take about two minutes and 20 seconds to download at 300 Mbps. On a 1200 bps modem, it would take about 13 months of continuous, non-stop downloading.

Home networking has improved a lot in 40 years.

10/01/2026

Throwback Thursday: 40 Years Ago - Arts Centre Updates

The October 1986 DCS Newsletter announced several new developments in the ARTS Computer Centre.

The new VAX 8650 known as SKYRUS became available for public use. It was about 1.5 times faster than SKYFOX, the older VAX 8600. These two machines were combined into a cluster named SKYBLU. Both these machines were also upgraded to VMS 4.4 on October 23, 1986 which offered new features like the ability to use hyphens in file names, and use the cluster node name (SKYBLU) on the DECnet network instead of having to use individual computer names.

For output, the Talaris 1200 300 dpi laser printer became available for use. The “1200” signified it could print 12 pages per minute. People using TeX or Scribe could print word processing documents using a variety of font styles and layouts, as well as text combined with graphics. By the end of 1986 the DCS newsletter would start using these advanced formatting capabilities.

There were also new software developments. SAS/GRAPH was installed for a one year trial period (eventually made permanent). This provided a convenient way to create graphs from SAS data sets. Also the 1987 version of BMDP (Bio-Medical Data Package) was installed.

These changes greatly improved the campus computing support going into 1987.

09/24/2026

Throwback Thursday: 40 Years Ago - Wide-Screen Terminals.

Forty years ago, the September 1986 DCS newsletter "Consulting Corner" article answered: how do I switch my VT100 to wide mode on VAX/VMS?

To go wide:
$ SET TERM/WIDTH=132

To go back:
$ SET TERM/WIDTH=80

Why those numbers?

Since 1928, IBM punched cards held 80 characters. Early terminals used 80-character lines to show one card per line.

But 80 characters on 8.5" x 11" paper was too narrow for business reports. The industry moved to 14" x 11" fanfold paper. After removing the tractor-feed holes on the sides you had 13.2 inches left. At 10 characters per inch, that is 132 columns.

When IBM launched the 1403 line printer in 1959, it used this wider paper at 132 columns. Other manufacturers adopted this and it became the standard.

When DEC released the VT100 in August 1978, it offered both: 80 columns for cards, 132 for reports.

The default screen size was 80 by 24. The 24 came from the IBM 3270 terminal from 1971. It was the most that fit legibly on a CRT, and a number that divides cleanly by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12 for windowing.

In 132-column mode the base VT100 could only show 14 lines. You needed the Advanced Video option, another 2K of RAM, for a full 132 by 24.

The VT100 legacy lives on today. Whenever you open a Windows, Linux or Mac terminal window you are still emulating a VT100 terminal.

09/17/2026

Throwback Thursday: 35 Years Ago - Unix / Linux

35 years ago today on September 17, 1991 Linus Torvalds released Linux version 0.01 on an FTP server at the University of Helsinki. It was 10,239 lines of code and didn’t include networking yet.

That same month the DCS newsletter posted the article “UNIX: Opening the Treasure Chest”. It announced that Computing Services was installing three DECstation 5000 computers running Ultrix (DEC’s version of Unix). They had a combined total drive space 9 Gigabytes. Their CPUs ran at 27 MIPs and 3 MegaFlops. For comparison one processor on the VAX 8600 was rated at 4 MIPS and less than 1 MegaFlop. A modern Intel I9-14900K CPU is about 450,000 MIPs and 1,000,000 MegaFlops.

Two of these machines were used for interactive time-sharing and file serving. The third was dedicated to long-running batch jobs.

These machines replaced the existing DECsystem 3100 Ultrix system named Harold. That name and all software and users were moved to one of the new systems.

At the same time the SKYCAT VAX 6320 was removed from the SKYBLU VAXcluster and traded in to help pay for the new systems. One of the SKYCAT CPUs was moved to the remaining SKYFOX computer, making it a four-processor VAX 6340. This left one less VAX CPU, but the new Ultrix systems added 20 times more processing power than that single VAX CPU so more than made up for it.

09/10/2026

Throwback Thursday: 25 Years Ago - An atypical September morning.

Almost 25 years ago, my clock radio woke me up at 7 AM like it did every morning. Instead of the normal news, weather, and sports, the announcers were talking about how a small plane had crashed into a building in New York City.

I turned on the TV to CNN and saw the building on fire. A few minutes later, the TV showed a second plane hit. The date, of course, was September 11, 2001.

I had to leave for work. When I got there, a coworker had brought in a small black and white portable TV. We were glued to the unfolding events. I also remember visiting the Rochester, New York TV station website trying to get more news. I had to go there because sites like CNN were swamped with traffic.

The effects on Information Technology were immediate. Suddenly, security was the top priority for computer systems. The business continuity and disaster recovery procedures developed for Y2K were back on everyone’s mind. For example: what would we do if a plane hit the Arts Tower?

Distributed data centers and off-site backups became standard. Those ideas would eventually evolve into the cloud services we use today.

The resulting grounding of air travel also forced people onto conference calls and video conferencing systems like NetMeeting and WebEx — lessons we put to use again during the pandemic.

Before 9/11, the tech mantra was: “Faster, Cheaper, More features.”

After 9/11, it became: “Secure, Resilient, Always Available.”

A lot of the infrastructure we take for granted today like IT security, cloud backups, VPNs, working remotely, and disaster recovery, trace back to lessons learned on September 11, 2001.

09/03/2026

Throwback Thursday: 40 Years Ago - Computer Center Renos

This article came from the September 1986 DCS Newsletter

Renovations to Arts Center

We have used the opportunity presented by the DECsystem 2060 leaving the campus to reorganize the computer room and to do some renovations to this center.

All computer equipment in this centre – – principally SKYWAY, SKYRUS, and SASK – – has been repositioned to allow planned-for equipment to be added easily. A wall has been added between the computer room proper and the tape library–OMR operator area. This has improved the working environment for the operation staff by significantly reducing noise and enabling better environmental control in both areas. Also, a door has been installed to allow direct entry into the I/O room from the hallway. This will eliminate the need to go through the terminal room, Arts 64, removing interruptions and distractions for classes using this room.

Dean Jones
Director

08/27/2026

BONUS Throwback Thursday: 35 Years Ago - A minor hobby programming project.

Since I didn’t do a Throwback Thursday last week here is a bonus one for this week. It’s a post made just over 35 years ago from some guy on the comp.os.minix newsgroup talking about a hobby project he was making for 80306 computers. Too bad it never got big and professional like GNU, was not “protable” [sic] and would never support anything other than AT-386 machines.

—- cut here —-

From: [email protected] (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT

Hello everybody out there using minix -

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them 🙂

Linus ([email protected])

PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable, and it probably never will support anything other than AT-386s, as that's all I have 😞.
---[sic]

Throwback Thursday: 35 Years Ago - Network SizeThe August 1991 DCS newsletter summarized data collected during the June ...
08/27/2026

Throwback Thursday: 35 Years Ago - Network Size

The August 1991 DCS newsletter summarized data collected during the June 4th, 1991 Usask network census day.

The main story was the large increase in the number of desktop devices. The mainframe multi-user and server systems remained unchanged at 13 Unix and 16 VMS systems. But the overall number of devices increased from 783 in 1990 to 1,159 in 1991, primarily either desktop devices or network infrastructure to support those devices.

For example, desktop Unix workstations increased from 67 to 131. VMS workstations went from 16 to 24. X-Terminals went from 2 to 8. PCs went from 395 to 622. Macintoshes went from 4 to 21.

The Macintosh figure seems low, but remember this survey only counted devices with Ethernet cards directly connected to the campus network. At the time most Macintoshes were using LocalTalk networks which used Kinetics Fastpath gateways to connect to the campus network. There were 50 of these gateways on campus, each supporting about 15 Macintoshes. So the total number of Macintoshes with indirect access to the campus network was actually larger than the number of PCs.

This partially explains why the number of “Bridges and Gateways” (which included the Kinetics Fastpath gateways) increased from 60 to 78.

There were also many desktop computers without Ethernet which used programs like Kermit to emulate VT-102 terminals over serial lines. These connected to computers on the network through terminal servers, which increased from 210 in 1990 to 246 in 1991.

This clearly shows how desktop computers were becoming an important part of the campus computing infrastructure. At this time they were still using Kermit or Telnet to connect to the larger multi-user systems, but they needed the network infrastructure to do that. Eventually, as these desktop systems became more powerful they would start replacing the larger “mainframe” systems and talking to each other directly over that network infrastructure.

08/13/2026

Throwback Thursday: 35 Years Ago - Birth of the World Wide Web

On August 2, 1991 a person at Oxford asked a question in the “alt.hypertext” usenet newsgroup about tagging links in hypertext. At 14:56:20 GMT on August 6, 1991 he received this reply. Later that day a more formal announcement was made. This public announcement resulted in the modern web everyone uses today.

Article:
From: [email protected] (Tim Berners-Lee)
Subject: Re: Qualifiers on Hypertext links...
Date: 6 Aug 91 14:56:20 GMT
Organization: CERN

In article [email protected] writes:
>
> I am looking for information/discussion on the following aspects of
> hypertext:
>
> 1. Qualifiers on links.
> Is it useful to be able to tag links... (e.g. "is-a", "includes",
> "illustrates", "contradicts"...)

The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any information anywhere. The system has code for managing a graph of nodes and links. Each link has a "relationship type" which is a string. There are some standard ones (e.g., standard hypertext jump, "includes" for structured documents, "is-a" for object-oriented descriptions) and users can define their own.

The system is based on a client-server architecture. The browser-editor runs on a local machine and requests information from servers anywhere on the network. Browsers exist for the NeXT (giving full objective-C index, text-format and graphic browsing, and full editing), and for line-mode terminals (dumb terminals, VT100s, etc). A screen-oriented (curses) browser is also available.

The servers provide files, or access to databases or existing documentation systems. For example, we run servers for the CERN phone book, the high-energy physics preprints database, all the news groups, and the internet RFCs.

A summary of the project is available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch (128.141.201.2) as /pub/www/doc/www-summary.txt.

The software itself is available by anonymous FTP from the same machine in the directory /pub/www (see the README file there).

We are very interested in comments, suggestions, and cooperation.

Tim Berners-Lee
[email protected]

Throwback Thursday: 40 Years Ago, new VAX computer The August 1986 newsletter front cover photo showed the new VAX 8650 ...
08/06/2026

Throwback Thursday: 40 Years Ago, new VAX computer

The August 1986 newsletter front cover photo showed the new VAX 8650 sitting in the entrance of the Arts Building on its way to be installed in the Arts Computer Centre. This new machine would be called SKYRUS and would be combined with the existing VAX 8600, SKYWAY, to more than double the academic computing capacity. The resulting VAXcluster was called SKYBLU.

How powerful was it? SKYRUS had a whopping 48 megabytes of memory compared to SKYWAY’s 32 megabytes, giving 80 megabytes total for the VAXcluster. An active interactive user would use about 1–2 megabytes. So this VAXcluster would comfortably handle 50–60 simultaneous users, and perhaps up to 80 with noticeable slowdowns at peak times. Most CPU-intensive programs were scheduled to run overnight as batch jobs when the system was less busy to avoid overloading the system.

Four additional disk drives were added. The article didn’t specify, but they were likely RA81s at 456 MB each. The cluster also added one TU78 tape drive capable of using 1600/6250 bpi tapes. This supplemented the existing 800/1600 bpi TU77 tape drives. These higher-capacity drives allowed nightly backups to complete more quickly.

Overall, the new VAXcluster more than doubled the capacity of the previous system, just in time for fall classes.

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