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DECUS
The Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society (DECUS) was an independent computer user group related to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of DECUS, Encompass, HP-Interex, and ITUG is the Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community, representing more than 50,000 participants.
DECUS was the Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society, a users' group for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) computers. Members included companies and organizations who purchased DEC equipment; many members were application programmers who wrote code for DEC machines or system programmers who managed DEC systems. DECUS was founded in March 1961 by Edward Fredkin.
DECUS was legally a part of Digital Equipment Corporation and subsidized by the company; however, it was run by unpaid volunteers. Digital staff members were not eligible to join DECUS, yet were allowed and encouraged to participate in DECUS activities. Digital, in turn, relied on DECUS as an important channel of communication with its customers.
DECUS had a software library which accepted orders from anyone, distributing programs submitted to it by people willing to share. It was organized by processor and operating system, using information submitted by program submitters, who signed releases allowing this and asserting their right to do so. The DECUS library published catalogs of these offerings yearly, though because it had the catalog mastered by an outside firm, it did not have easy ways to retrieve the content of early catalogs (prior to circa 1980) in machine readable format. Later material was maintained in house and was more easily edited. The charges for copying were somewhat high, reflecting the fact the copies were made by hand on DECUS equipment.
There were two DECUS US symposia per year, at which members and DEC employees gave presentations, and could visit an exhibit hall containing many new computer models and peripherals among other things. By grace of the DEC employees, it became a custom to allow users to copy media for one another on these machines. This activity grew with time, and in the spring of 1977 some volunteers from the RSX SIG (Special Interest Group) led by Phil Cannon, Jim Neeland, and several others, arranged an informal drop-off, and made master distributions of all material submitted. Then they and other volunteers essentially made copies of this master distribution on tapes for the rest of the symposium, for anyone with a blank tape to write on.
This very quickly grew, and was noted in LUG (local user group) and SIG (special interest group) newsletters. The process of creating a master quickly attracted other volunteers who would make a master index of whatever had been submitted. The process of physically creating master tapes remained much the same until around 1979, when the tapecopy coordinators arranged copying facilities somewhere near the symposium site, because 9-track tape drives were not appearing as much on the exhibit hall floor often enough to be relied on. By fall 1979, there was a release form used with submissions, so that the DECUS library could redistribute the combined tapes, making them more easily available to members who did not get to the symposia. The VAX/VMS SIG started producing SIG tapes in spring 1979 and other SIGs, notably RSTS, RT-11, Languages and Tools, and the 10/20 SIGs, had analogous distributions made in somewhat similar fashion.
The distribution by copying only at the symposium was seen to be inadequate, so a tree of volunteers, each of whom would receive a copy of the material and make multiple copies for others, was devised. In these cases, the person desiring the material was expected to furnish blank media, as no money ever changed hands. The tapes grew in size constantly, and eventually moved to 8mm Exabyte media and to CDs, and then to DVDs. By that time nobody worried much about the relatively modest cost of blank media.
The RSX SIG tapes continued until 1992, when material was drying up. Some RSX material was put on VMS SIG tapes after that, and around 1987 the Languages and Tools SIG tapes were merged in. The distributions continued to be released twice a year until 2005, and were released yearly in 2006 and 2007 when the tapecopy coordinator who had been making masters since the mid 1980s, Glenn Everhart, retired from the role. By that time, network distribution had become good enough that media copy was no longer necessary in most places.
Hub AI
DECUS AI simulator
(@DECUS_simulator)
DECUS
The Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society (DECUS) was an independent computer user group related to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of DECUS, Encompass, HP-Interex, and ITUG is the Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community, representing more than 50,000 participants.
DECUS was the Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society, a users' group for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) computers. Members included companies and organizations who purchased DEC equipment; many members were application programmers who wrote code for DEC machines or system programmers who managed DEC systems. DECUS was founded in March 1961 by Edward Fredkin.
DECUS was legally a part of Digital Equipment Corporation and subsidized by the company; however, it was run by unpaid volunteers. Digital staff members were not eligible to join DECUS, yet were allowed and encouraged to participate in DECUS activities. Digital, in turn, relied on DECUS as an important channel of communication with its customers.
DECUS had a software library which accepted orders from anyone, distributing programs submitted to it by people willing to share. It was organized by processor and operating system, using information submitted by program submitters, who signed releases allowing this and asserting their right to do so. The DECUS library published catalogs of these offerings yearly, though because it had the catalog mastered by an outside firm, it did not have easy ways to retrieve the content of early catalogs (prior to circa 1980) in machine readable format. Later material was maintained in house and was more easily edited. The charges for copying were somewhat high, reflecting the fact the copies were made by hand on DECUS equipment.
There were two DECUS US symposia per year, at which members and DEC employees gave presentations, and could visit an exhibit hall containing many new computer models and peripherals among other things. By grace of the DEC employees, it became a custom to allow users to copy media for one another on these machines. This activity grew with time, and in the spring of 1977 some volunteers from the RSX SIG (Special Interest Group) led by Phil Cannon, Jim Neeland, and several others, arranged an informal drop-off, and made master distributions of all material submitted. Then they and other volunteers essentially made copies of this master distribution on tapes for the rest of the symposium, for anyone with a blank tape to write on.
This very quickly grew, and was noted in LUG (local user group) and SIG (special interest group) newsletters. The process of creating a master quickly attracted other volunteers who would make a master index of whatever had been submitted. The process of physically creating master tapes remained much the same until around 1979, when the tapecopy coordinators arranged copying facilities somewhere near the symposium site, because 9-track tape drives were not appearing as much on the exhibit hall floor often enough to be relied on. By fall 1979, there was a release form used with submissions, so that the DECUS library could redistribute the combined tapes, making them more easily available to members who did not get to the symposia. The VAX/VMS SIG started producing SIG tapes in spring 1979 and other SIGs, notably RSTS, RT-11, Languages and Tools, and the 10/20 SIGs, had analogous distributions made in somewhat similar fashion.
The distribution by copying only at the symposium was seen to be inadequate, so a tree of volunteers, each of whom would receive a copy of the material and make multiple copies for others, was devised. In these cases, the person desiring the material was expected to furnish blank media, as no money ever changed hands. The tapes grew in size constantly, and eventually moved to 8mm Exabyte media and to CDs, and then to DVDs. By that time nobody worried much about the relatively modest cost of blank media.
The RSX SIG tapes continued until 1992, when material was drying up. Some RSX material was put on VMS SIG tapes after that, and around 1987 the Languages and Tools SIG tapes were merged in. The distributions continued to be released twice a year until 2005, and were released yearly in 2006 and 2007 when the tapecopy coordinator who had been making masters since the mid 1980s, Glenn Everhart, retired from the role. By that time, network distribution had become good enough that media copy was no longer necessary in most places.
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