Some Honeywell management views, however, implied a phase- out of Level 64 at the profit of Level 66 as soon as the G100 and H2000 business sources would have dried up.

Consequences in Japan

It should be noted that the Honeywell takeover of GE operations was not without consequences in Japan. The TOSHIBA company had a long relationship with GE and was a licensee of GE600 and GE6000, while Nippon Electric (NEC) was a Honeywell licensee for H2000. The Japanese Ministry of Industry and Trade (MITI) pressed the two separate companies to work together and that lead to a progressive takeover of TOSHIBA computer (mainframes) operations by NEC.

Honeywell signed up with NEC a 10 years' know-how transfer agreement giving to NEC a full access to NPL. All NEC current mainframe products -- ACOS2, ACOS4, ACOS6 and later MS (Level 6) products  -- are born under this know-how agreement.

NEC acquired that know-how not only by buying documents but also by sending contributors in the Honeywell teams who were working on NPL as well as on H6000--the new name of GE6000-. For example, Y.UMEMURA was involved in H2000 to Level2 emulator and conversion team in Boston. Y.TSUJI, H.SHIN were staying for several years in Paris to work as programmers and later as coordinators of the know-how transfer. K.NISHIMURA was also involved in the manufacturing "dossier" technology transfer in Paris and Angers.

A conflict occurred around 1974  between NEC and Honeywell. NEC had actually decided to make Level 64 -- alias ACOS4, its primary product line. NEC seemed to have taken this position because Level 64 was locating itself in a 32-bits EBCDIC world which was the world of Japanese big customers and also because the old NEC establishment was very reluctant to unite with TOSHIBA designers who had worked for long with GE on the GE6000 product line. Those differences inside NEC vanish progressively because NEC management succeeded to have a common organization for ACOS4 and ACOS6 product lines with the only exception of the Basic Software Divisions. Nevertheless, Honeywell forced Bull to cancel a new hardware project the P7A, an ECL machine adding a paging architecture to the original 64, which was planned to be developed in Paris in common with NEC in 1973.

Honeywell put also a lot of pressure on NEC to involve it in a new GCOS66 project called the Med-6 project . NEC accepted to work on Med-6, and, for instance, Yoishi UMEMURA was transferred from Boston to Phoenix on this project. NEC invested later into the ill-fated Med-6 using CML and water-cooled technology that was announced by Honeywell as 66/85 and was later abandoned when it was  facing performance problems. This design was still imported in Japan without water-cooling and was the ACOS S/800, running under ACOS6. In the mean time, NEC did not abandon any of its developments on ACOS4 and even decided in the early 80s to let this product line overlapping completely the ACOS6 product line.

L66 and Multics

In 1972, it had been decided that the migration path out of the limited decor of the GE600 should be through the MULTICS decor that gave to the 36-bit world similar advanced functionalities as Level 64, for segment-level protection and high-level language support.

A coexistence through a GCOS3 accommodation mode under MULTICS, the development of a transaction system à la Level 64 TDS on MULTICS decor and the outstanding capabilities of MULTICS interactive facilities - given enough hardware power- would have made a more than reasonable product in 1974. It was also planned to implement a virtual machine project on this system that might have allow a future co- existence of a 32-bit world with a 36-bit world. It was also planned and eventually implemented to have a H2000 emulator on the Level 66, but this was provided by the reconnection of a used H2000 to the Level 66 system controller and did not imply access to the H2000 peripherals.

The work based on MULTICS decor was a little bit late - like the other NPL projects at the exception of Level 62- and W.DIX finally endorsed a proposal of John COULEUR, the original designer of GE600 and GE645 hardware, to introduce a new decor -called NSA as New Six thousand Architecture- instead of following the MULTICS roadmap. The new decor was considering segmentation as data set descriptors and introduced address space as the inter-user protection mechanism; the "ring" concept was dropped for a "domain" mechanism that potentially would avoid the "Trojan Horse" syndrome of user data violation of privacy by procedures planted in the system by some dishonest programmers; it also introduced a progress over NPL implementation: it offered a hardware controlled stack independent from software controlled stack to store registers and return information. This new decor was allegedly to be field retrofittable on existing systems, which was eventually found not feasible, and justified a delay to implement the new facilities. The decision was fought desperately by MULTICS supporters, but Marketing and Management were not clever enough to appreciate the consequences of that decision.

It is not here the purpose of telling the history of GCOS8, but it has to remember that it took 6 additional years to be introduced and that the unification of the segmented environments remains to be seen 14 years later.

Birth of NML future Level 6

At the end of 1973, Boston Computer Operations had been completely re-oriented toward a mini-computer project, called NML -as New Minicomputer Line- which gave birth to the Level 6, later DPS-6, products. It ought to be a competitor for DEC PDP-11 product and feature a processor on one card. Part of the BCO staff was disbanded: some move back to Phoenix and were there using their experience in NPL to make the GCOS8 project rolling out; other left to DEC where they were instrumental in the VAX/VMS project; the majority move to the Level 6 project specially in the area of compilers and utilities.

1975

Bull alone on Level 64.

The Honeywell management then reviewed the state of developments of Level 64 and examined several options: one was were to use of ACOS4 nucleus -evolved from initial GCOS64 implementation- and to rely on NEC manpower to decrease the Honeywell R&D cost on level 64; another one was to scrap the GCOS4 nucleus and to use the 4A Backup project as a substitute.

The former option was discarded because the functional advantages were minimal and that communications with Fuchu would have been more difficult that those with Boston. The second option did not give an upward path for the G100 emulator that was now developed under GCOS64 and would have caused serious morale and image problems in Honeywell- Bull. It should not be ignored that the major argument displayed to Honeywell management by both partisan and non- partisan analysts was the social unrest that might have resulted from the cancellation of the GCOS64 project.

Finally, the decision was taken to move all the implementation of the Level 64 project in Paris under Marc BOURIN authority and to transfer the software know-how of the Boston operation to Paris. This transfer was managed by Michel ROCHER and took approximately 9 months. Some transferred products, such as COBOL, HFAS or SORT were integrated with minimum changes into GCOS64. Other products like UFAS, IDS, ... were completely redesigned by Paris engineers keeping the Boston work as a functional specification.

The design responsibility for tape and disc controllers  was also transferred to Paris. T&D remained for some time in Boston until 1975. The MSC original design remained the base of Bull future controllers from Consider revising. Long sequences of prepositional phrases can be confusing. MSC-E in 1978 to the MSC-RV and even the MSC-4. An MTC-E was evolved with few modifications from the MTC Boston design, while the ATP controller of 1979 was a new design. A new version of Level 64-35 was introduced in 1978 with a re-implemented URC -including diskette support on a DMA channel- , an larger memory for the CPU and the new versions of tape and disc subsystems.

The T&D architecture of Level 64 was relatively complex, widely due to the splitting of work between Boston and Paris and of the relative independence of the T&D development shop vis-à- vis the software development shop. Boston developed several interpreters: one for device tests, the other for controllers tests. Paris developed standard jobs isolated from the OS design by a TDIP interface package. All T&D originally were running under SCP and were ported on GCOS64 in 1976.

P7 Follow-on

After the P8 cancellation, Bull started a new project code-named P7A which was to introduce a cache, to add paging and to improve the performances by using ECL technology. This project was headed by Jacques BIENVENU and was to be developed in Paris in common between Honeywell-Bull and NEC.
Faced to the delay of the introduction of NPL software and looking to the brighter sales that Honeywell salesmen brought on the H6000, Honeywell instructed Bull to cancel this hardware project and to suspend Bull activities in CPU area until mid-1975. NEC was signified this cancellation in a relatively rude manner and had to develop by themselves the N4 project marketed as ACOS4-500 in mid-76.

Bull alone on Level 64.

The Honeywell management then reviewed the state of developments of Level 64 and examined several options: one was were to use of ACOS4 nucleus -evolved from initial GCOS64 implementation- and to rely on NEC manpower to decrease the Honeywell R&D cost on level 64; another one was to scrap the GCOS4 nucleus and to use the 4A Backup project as a substitute.

The former option was discarded because the functional advantages were minimal and that communications with Fuchu would have been more difficult that those with Boston. The second option did not give an upward path for the G100 emulator that was now developed under GCOS64 and would have caused serious morale and image problems in Honeywell- Bull. It should not be ignored that the major argument displayed to Honeywell management by both partisan and non- partisan analysts was the social unrest that might have resulted from the cancellation of the GCOS64 project.

Finally, the decision was taken to move all the implementation of the Level 64 project in Paris under Marc BOURIN authority and to transfer the software know-how of the Boston operation to Paris. This transfer was managed by Michel ROCHER and took approximately 9 months. Some transferred products, such as COBOL, HFAS or SORT were integrated with minimum changes into GCOS64. Other products like UFAS, IDS, ... were completely redesigned by Paris engineers keeping the Boston work as a functional specification.

The design responsibility for tape and disc controllers  was also transferred to Paris. T&D remained for some time in Boston until 1975. The MSC original design remained the base of Bull future controllers from Consider revising. Long sequences of prepositional phrases can be confusing. MSC-E in 1978 to the MSC-RV and even the MSC-4. An MTC-E was evolved with few modifications from the MTC Boston design, while the ATP controller of 1979 was a new design. A new version of Level 64-35 was introduced in 1978 with a re-implemented URC -including diskette support on a DMA channel- , an larger memory for the CPU and the new versions of tape and disc subsystems.

The T&D architecture of Level 64 was relatively complex, widely due to the splitting of work between Boston and Paris and of the relative independence of the T&D development shop vis-à- vis the software development shop. Boston developed several interpreters: one for device tests, the other for controllers tests. Paris developed standard jobs isolated from the OS design by a TDIP interface package. All T&D originally were running under SCP and were ported on GCOS64 in 1976.

P7 Follow-on

After the P8 cancellation, Bull started a new project code-named P7A which was to introduce a cache, to add paging and to improve the performances by using ECL technology. This project was headed by Jacques BIENVENU and was to be developed in Paris in common between Honeywell-Bull and NEC.
Faced to the delay of the introduction of NPL software and looking to the brighter sales that Honeywell salesmen brought on the H6000, Honeywell instructed Bull to cancel this hardware project and to suspend Bull activities in CPU area until mid-1975. NEC was signified this cancellation in a relatively rude manner and had to develop by themselves the N4 project marketed as ACOS4-500 in mid-76.