The record
Sources
The dated sources behind the facts of the time on this site.
The account of SuccessInc on this site is Maynard L. Dokken’s own, recorded long after the events; little on paper survives from 1987 to 1994, and the diagrams were redrawn later, from what survived of the work and from memory.
The facts about the world SuccessInc worked in come from dated sources, listed here by subject, each with its date and a link. They show what existed at the time and what it cost; they do not, by themselves, document SuccessInc. Facts after 1994 follow the record sites of the companies that came next.
Minix
- 7 January 1987Minix 1.1 announced by its author on Usenet: full source, no AT&T code, $79.95 per set, “NOT public domain”; the 640K IBM PC version on eight 360K diskettes
https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.unix.wizards/1987-January/023913.html - 11 January 1987Minix 1.1 follow-up on Usenet: “there is no RS232 driver”; one terminal by default
https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.unix.wizards/1987-January/026493.html - 1 February 1989Minix information sheet: versions and prices; online repositories of the source not permitted
https://krsaborio.net/unix/research/1989/0203.htm - 3 February 1998Open Source Initiative, history: the term “open source” coined in Palo Alto
https://opensource.org/history
Other operating systems of the time
- 19 August 1985Usenet report of “the $43,000 source license” for AT&T Unix System V
https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.unix/1985-August/005626.html - 25 August 1991The first Linux announcements, for 386 machines only
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~awb/linux.history.html - July 1992386BSD 0.1 release notes: the first complete, freely modifiable BSD for PCs
https://cdrom.classicistranieri.com/QRZ_vol3_Summer_1994/UCSD/PACKET/TCPIP/BSD/386BSD.TXT
The IBM PS/2, Micro Channel and serial lines
- 2 April 1987IBM PS/2 announcement letters: Micro Channel models; the Dual Async Adapter/A, up to seven serial ports
https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view/16616/Shareware%20Grab%20Bag.iso/090/newps2.arc/NEWPS2 - c. 1992IBM, “How PC cards prohibit sharing”: why PC/XT/AT cards cannot share interrupts and Micro Channel cards can
https://ardent-tool.com/tech/How_PC_Cards_Prohibit_Sharing.html - 1987IBM history: the Personal System/2
https://www.ibm.com/history/ps-2 - MS-DOS 3.3 to 5.0Microsoft Knowledge Base Q60230: MS-DOS supports only two serial ports, COM1 and COM2
https://hwiegman.home.xs4all.nl/msdos/60230.htm - reviewed 1994Microsoft Knowledge Base Q82136: COM port addresses and interrupts; interrupt sharing assured only on Micro Channel
https://techshelps.github.io/MSDN/KB/Source/win3x/q82136.htm - July 1987National Semiconductor application note AN-491: the 16550A serial chip with a 16-byte buffer
https://shrubbery.net/~heas/willem/PDF/NSC/AN/AN-491.pdf
Hard drives
- 22 October 1985Seagate ST-225 OEM manual: drive-select jumpers and termination, stepper actuator, 65 ms average access
https://www.tiffe.de/Robotron/misc/Winchester-HD/MFM-ST412-ST506/Seagate/ST-225/Seagate_ST225_OEM-Manual_Oct85_OCR.pdf - August 1985Creative Computing, “Invasion of the hard disk”: stepper motors against voice-coil positioners
https://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v11n8/28_Invasion_of_the_hard_disk.php - 28 March 1990Microsoft Knowledge Base Q60089: low-level formatting from the controller’s own ROM
https://infania.net/ms6kb/Q60089.htm - 14 May 1988A Unix installation on a PC, reported on Usenet: disk defects entered by hand, “for gurus only”
https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.unix.microport/1988-May/001657.html
No web, no search
- 1989–1993CERN, a short history of the web: available outside CERN from August 1991
https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web/short-history-web
UUNET
- 24 June 1987UUNET General Information: a non-profit service for Usenet news and UUCP mail; connect-time charges
https://mirror.cyberbits.eu/textfiles.com/internet/FAQ/uunet.txt - 15 September 1988UUNET status report on Usenet: run on a non-profit basis by the USENIX Association; 421 subscribers
https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.org.usenix/1988-September/000951.html - August 2015;login: (USENIX), the origins of UUNET and its move to a for-profit company
https://files.usenix.org/s3fs-public/cdn/login_aug15_09_salus.pdf - 17 April 1992AlterNet General Information: UUNET’s fee schedule effective 13 September 1991
https://papperlan.duckdns.org/textfiles.com/internet/FAQ/alternet.txt
Bulletin boards and online services
- 1978–1990sEngineering and Technology History Wiki: bulletin board systems, message boards, files and door games
https://ethw.org/Bulletin_Board_Systems - 2020WiderScreen: measuring the bulletin board systems of North America
https://widerscreen.fi/numerot/2020-2-3/demography-and-decentralization-measuring-the-bulletin-board-systems-of-north-america/ - November 1986COMPUTE!: a separate registration and bill for each online service
https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue78/015_1_ONLINE.php
Single sign-on
- 1988MIT Project Athena, “Kerberos: An Authentication Service for Open Network Systems”
https://css.csail.mit.edu/6.566/2018/readings/kerberos.pdf - October 1984Library Systems Newsletter: EasyNet, one front door to many databases
https://www.librarytechnology.org/document/4078/
Recruitment
- 27 April 1972U.S. General Accounting Office, B-133182: computerised job banks from 1968
https://www.gao.gov/assets/210/202246.pdf - 3 October 1984A job advertisement posted to Usenet
https://www.tuhs.org/Usenet/comp.unix.wizards/1984-October/008211.html - May 1983D Magazine: search firms paid 15 to 35 percent of first-year salary
https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1983/may/business-head-hunting/
The term “application service provider”
- c. 1999–2001ADT Magazine: the term entered the industry lexicon in mid-1998, after an IDC report
https://adtmag.com/Articles/2001/05/29/ASPs-Service-bureau-redux-or-tectonic-change.aspx - February 2001SIIA, Software as a Service: Strategic Backgrounder
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/saas-2001/13148099 - May 2009Communications of the ACM, “The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Software as a Service”: timesharing from 1965
https://cacmb4.acm.org/magazines/2009/5/24642-the-rise-fall-and-resurrection-of-software-as-a-service
Communities and knowledge bases
- 1 April 1990MIT Sloan working paper 3144-90, Answer Garden: a question-and-answer database that grows
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/175262 - August 1994COMPUTE!: the Microsoft Knowledge Base on CompuServe
https://atarimagazines.com/compute/issue167/58_12_great_online_plac.php
Security before SSL
- May 1986National Bureau of Standards SP 500-137, Security for Dial-Up Lines
https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/500/137/final - 29 November 1988Purdue University technical report CSD-TR-823, “The Internet Worm Program: An Analysis”
https://mirror.cyberbits.eu/textfiles.com/100/tr823.txt - 3 February 1994CERT advisory CA-94:01, ongoing network monitoring attacks: access information captured for “tens of thousands of systems”
https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/test@lists.nanog.org/thread/JQFJLNSVX3SHMUY5FP3IC2664JA4OQQG/ - published August 2011RFC 6101, the SSL 3.0 protocol (document of 18 November 1996)
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6101
After 1994: the record sites
- assuredcard.coAssured Card: history, 1994–1999
https://assuredcard.co/history/ - assuredcredit.coAssured Credit: the innovations behind the payment gateway, 1987–1999
https://assuredcredit.co/innovations-behind-the-payment-gateway/ - assuredcredit.coAssured Credit: patent application CA 2,300,347 and WO 2001/067408
https://assuredcredit.co/patent-online-merchant-payment-gateway/ - milinx.coMilinx: history, 1987 to 2002
https://milinx.co/history/ - milinx.coMilinx: release of 31 July 2000, the Application Data Center
https://milinx.co/news/milinx-launches-data-center-sets-asp-standards/ - maynardldokken.comSuccessInc in the record of Maynard L. Dokken
https://maynardldokken.com/successinc/