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 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.

	

	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]