OS-TAN THEORY 101

[Chocofreak13]

i like point 2. point 1 is slightly confusing, but 2 is crisp and clear and easy to understand. :3 good theory bells, it makes sense. -w-

[Bella]

Btw, do you know who the mother of the System/360-tans are?

I didn't know that Plan B and Octopus would be considered cloned -siblings- to Plan 9!

If i recall correctly the System/360-tans were created from scratch.

Plan B-tan is Plan 9-tan's clone - making her Plan 9-tan's genetic twin. Octopus-tan is Plan B's clone, which also means she's Plan 9-tan's sister. (Cause a copy of a copy is the same as a copy...)

i like point 2. point 1 is slightly confusing, but 2 is crisp and clear and easy to understand. :3 good theory bells, it makes sense. -w-

It's pretty simple to follow, if you stop thinking in terms of human families (since, we've established that human family structures sort of don't exist among OS-tans). I'm basically saying that, within OS-tan families, siblings can be created from one another.

[Bella]

What do you guys make of this? http://www.acsa2000.net/randfsq-7.htm

It's about the AN/FSQ-7 computer (incorrectly referred to in the article as a Rand AN/FSQ-7 *facepalm*). I found it while googling "IBM AN/FSQ-7 and IBM 709", trying to find out if there's a connection between the two. (Since the 709 is vacuum-tube based and one of the ancestors of the 7090.)

The website's sketchy as all hell and I can point out glaring inaccuracies, but, it's strangely intellectually tantalizing at the same time:

-They keep referring to the AN/FSQ-7 as the Whirlwind II

-They call the AN/FSQ-7 the "Spiritual grandfather of all ... mainframe computer systems and the father of the machines that became IBM's primary mainframe offerings" and furthermore says "The FSQ-7 is the architectural forerunner, allegedly, of the RCA Spectra 70 and the IBM "stretch" 709/7090, duplicated by Xerox in joint efforts with MIT the Sigma 7 and the Sperry Univac 1170 series."

-At the same time, the author declares that "Many of the advancements introduced in the ...7090, 360 and 370 architecture mainframes were actually not developed by IBM nor RCA, but by the University of Manchester ... in the ATLAS Computer"

-Later on in the article, the author boldly states that SAGE was more-or-less responsible for pushing IBM into the mainframe business and creating the tech giant we've come to know and love/loathe; creating DARPANET; that its spinoff, SABRE, was the "backbone of the airline business"; and says that Ken Olsen was quoted as saying that Whirlwind was the first minicomputer and that DEC was entirely based off of technology garnered from it.

What do you think? Computer-history apocrypha? Conspiracy theorizing? Insane ramblings? I can't tell.

[Aurora Borealis]

Gotta type this up quickly, but either way, SAGE was the most influential system of its time. I really don't know how involved SAGE was with IBM, but have heard before about SAGE being responsible for DARPANET, its descendant SABRE shaping the airline industry, and that the first DEC computer was based off of the TX-0 project of Whirlwind, but were the rest of the DEC computers based directly off Whirlwind's architecture too?

[NejinOniwa]

I'd go out on a limb and say that it all actually sounds pretty legit. But, well. Some more research on the matter is advisable.

[Bella]

@Aurora: IBM seems to want to forget about/ignore SAGE, for some reason. Which baffles me, considering it was one of the most impressive technological feats ever pulled off, and raked in tons of money for IBM... moreso if it actually influenced the other IBM systems so heavily. I've heard several sources link the IBM 709, 7090 and AN/FSQ-7; I'm now curious how the 7090 relates to the other IBM mainframes...

@Nej: Yes, most of the technical details sound correct... it's an odd article, though. (SAGE seems to have a lot of strange anecdotes and folklore surrounding it, so this isn't exactly anything new).

[stewartsage]

The /360s were completely new creations, semi-related to the independently created /360 OSs.

Well, anything with SAGE referred to as Whirlwind II kind of puts me off enough.  And saying it was built by Rand.... who backed out on the whole deal. 

SAGE definitely didn't propel IBM to technical dominance, though she certainly laid the foundation for their eventual success.  IBM built it's success on the back of it's 700/7000 series mainframes and up which really didn't have have much to do with SAGE at all.  Neither did their wildly successful System/360 units.

I remember reading somewhere else about the AN/FSQ-7 RCA Spectra 70 connection but I can't for the life of me remember where that was.

As for Whirlwind: Yes, she made DEC and too many computer advances to count possible.

[Bella]

But the 7000 (7090?) series is supposedly a solid-state AN/FSQ-7... and it's also supposedly a solid-state 700, so I always assumed the chain of ancestry went FSQ-7 -> 700 series -> 7000 series. *shrugs*

Rand was originally supposed to build it?

[stewartsage]

They defaulted on the contract, as I recall from yet another article I can no longer find.

*shrug*

I didn't think the 700s were involved at all.

[Chocofreak13]

from all i've read from you guys, i think the only connection SAGE would have with others (besides ancestors and descendants) would be the military or parent company. if you want to try to connect it though, would SAGE have a code number like the others? (it's possible.) start there maybe?

@bells: if the site has inaccuracies, try emailing the webmaster. if there's one thing i can't stand, it's blatant mistakes. >__<;

[Aurora Borealis]

Look what I finally started on the wiki!

http://ostan-collections.net/wiki/Life_and_Death

This could go on the wiki thread, but given that this is still about conjectures and theories, and that Choco really wants this thread alive again (I do too!), thought it'd be better to post it here.

[Chocofreak13]

i should mention that i found a pic of XP, ME, and 2000 weeping over the grave of an outdated version of IE. (didn't edit the article, since i figured i'd better leave it to you to decide whether that's worth a mention).

btw, certain things on wikipedia are collected into series (such as the "series on capital punishment" i was reading earlier today). is there any way we could gather various pages into a series? if we could, we could separate the different theories discussed here into their respective pages and link them in a series.

also, while we're on the topic, i think that in order for an os-tan/-kun (or any sort of -tan/kun, including hardware and programs) to be declared officially "dead", it must fufill one of these two conditions:
1. there must be no userbase, whether it be in person or through emulation.
2. it was NEVER open-source, and is no longer in use (this would apply more to mainframe computers that blurred the line between hardware and software, and never made it to the net; this would render -tans like Hollerith and GENIAC dead).

if they were not to fulfill one of these, they could be considered "alive"--but just barely, depending on user base. (for instance, a REEEEALY obscure OS might survive as a zombie, a ghost, or on the brink of death).

little morbid, but i think we should have slightly stricter guidelines for 'dead' and 'alive'. :\

EDIT: ps. thanks for reviving this thread. :3

[Aurora Borealis]

Okay. In -most- cases, a discontinued system can still be considered alive if it still has a userbase.

GENIAC is one of those exceptions, apparently although there's no real userbase left, there are still working GENIAC units out there! It's such a simple computer that it's not that prone to hardware failure!

Systems such as Xenix, Apple I, ARX, and CTSS are 'dead', and are deceased OS-tans even though they live on through emulation. As I said, some deaths are for storyline purposes. But then again, emulation generally isn't practical and I don't expect anyone to use an emulated system for anything more than casual, hobbyist use. So there's no full-time, dedicated userbase for these.

If a deceased system has emulation available, it's not -completely- dead, and those characters live as ghosts. There's only one or two deceased OS-tans that completely came back from the dead.

Some systems are completely dead, with no emulators, the system dismantled, etc. This was the fate of many early computer-tans.

There are some borderline cases, such as C65-tan and System 3.4-tan (both extremely obscure, short-lived systems with no known emulators or viable userbase), but I consider them alive. Incidentally, both of them have cheated death many times in-story!

Another borderline case is SAGE-tan, since the SAGE OS is lost forever, and its hardware was shut down in '83, but much of the hardware is still in existence, including an intact computer in a museum. She didn't die when the last SAGE computer was shut down, but she went blind and lost much of her sanity.

The definition for death needs to be a bit more lenient:

*An OS-tan is (in most cases) deceased if there's not enough of a userbase using just original, unemulated hardware and software to keep the system alive.
*If emulation is available, the OS-tan still lives as a ghost in a dead-alive limbo state.
*OS-tans are completely dead if there's nothing of their system (hardware or software, and there's no emulation available) left in existence.

[Chocofreak13]

eh, alright, let's go with that.

btw, if i can find that pic of IE 6's (?) funeral, i'll send it to you to put on the life/death page.

i'd like a repost of the guidelines nej made for os-tan death, those were specific enough to not leave any ambiguity, but still fair enough that most os-tans weren't officially "dead".

[Aurora Borealis]

Sounds good! I'll have to dig around, but I know that Nej's really insightful post about life and death is somewhere in this thread.