Foonly

Foonly
 n.

   1. The {PDP-10} successor that was to have been built by the Super
   Foonly project at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
   along with a new operating system. (The name itself came from FOO NLI,
   an error message emitted by a PDP-10 assembler at SAIL meaning "FOO is
   Not a Legal Identifier". The intention was to leapfrog from the old
   {DEC} timesharing system SAIL was then running to a new generation,
   bypassing TENEX which at that time was the ARPANET standard. ARPA
   funding for both the Super Foonly and the new operating system was cut
   in 1974. Most of the design team went to DEC and contributed greatly
   to the design of the PDP-10 model KL10.

   2. The name of the company formed by Dave Poole, one of the principal
   Super Foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's more colorful
   personalities. Many people remember the parrot which sat on Poole's
   shoulder and was a regular companion.

   3. Any of the machines built by Poole's company. The first was the F-1
   (a.k.a. Super Foonly), which was the computational engine used to
   create the graphics in the movie TRON. The F-1 was the fastest PDP-10
   ever built, but only one was ever made. The effort drained Foonly of
   its financial resources, and the company turned towards building
   smaller, slower, and much less expensive machines. Unfortunately,
   these ran not the popular {TOPS-20} but a TENEX variant called Foonex;
   this seriously limited their market. Also, the machines shipped were
   actually wire-wrapped engineering prototypes requiring individual
   attention from more than usually competent site personnel, and thus
   had significant reliability problems. Poole's legendary temper and
   unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did not help matters. By the time
   DEC's "Jupiter Project" followon to the PDP-10 was cancelled in 1983,
   Foonly's proposal to build another F-1 was eclipsed by the {Mars}, and
   the company never quite recovered. See the {Mars} entry for the
   continuation and moral of this story.
    

Foonly

   1. The {PDP-10} successor that was to have been built by the
   Super Foonly project at the {Stanford Artificial Intelligence
   Laboratory} along with a new operating system.  The intention
   was to leapfrog from the old DEC {time-sharing} system SAIL
   was then running to a new generation, bypassing TENEX which at
   that time was the {ARPANET} {standard}.  {ARPA} funding for
   both the Super Foonly and the new operating system was cut in
   1974.  Most of the design team went to DEC and contributed
   greatly to the design of the PDP-10 model KL10.

   2. The name of the company formed by Dave Poole, one of the
   principal Super Foonly designers, and one of hackerdom's more
   colourful personalities.  Many people remember the parrot
   which sat on Poole's shoulder and was a regular companion.

   3. Any of the machines built by Poole's company.  The first
   was the F-1 (a.k.a.  Super Foonly), which was the
   computational engine used to create the graphics in the movie
   "TRON".  The F-1 was the fastest PDP-10 ever built, but only
   one was ever made.  The effort drained Foonly of its financial
   resources, and the company turned toward building smaller,
   slower, and much less expensive machines.  Unfortunately,
   these ran not the popular {TOPS-20} but a TENEX variant called
   Foonex; this seriously limited their market.  Also, the
   machines shipped were actually wire-wrapped engineering
   prototypes requiring individual attention from more than
   usually competent site personnel, and thus had significant
   reliability problems.  Poole's legendary temper and
   unwillingness to suffer fools gladly did not help matters.  By
   the time of the Jupiter project cancellation in 1983, Foonly's
   proposal to build another F-1 was eclipsed by the {Mars}, and
   the company never quite recovered.  See the {Mars} entry for
   the continuation and moral of this story.

   [{Jargon File}]