View Source: Dave Twyver

Dave arrived at UBC in the summer of 1968 just as his past 7044 expertise was about to be obsoleted by the new 360/67. His first assignment was to write a DSR for the 2260 Display Stations to make them emulate cardpunch machines (which seemed to him like a really dumb idea). After intense study of Mike's 2741 DSR (TSFO) and after weeks mastering the subtleties of device interrupts, re-entrant code and page faults due to misuse of the TRT instruction, he produced a DSR more befitting a revolutionary interactive time sharing system like MTS. When the improved 3270 display stations came along a couple of years later, all of the card punch heritage was able to be expunged. Major portions of this 3270 DSR code were subsequently pirated by frustrated users of the TSS and VM operating systems for the 360/67 and its successors. Some of Dave's other contributions to MTS included a DSR for the Adage Graphics computer, an emulator for the DEC PDP-8 and a DSR to interface PDP-8s to MTS. He also adapted and integrated an interpreter for the APL language into MTS, which was a deciding factor in convincing the University of Alberta to adopt MTS (at least for a while...) Dave spent his last couple of years at UBC developing a campus computer network. He left in 1974 to join Northern Telecom (now Nortel) where he spent 22 years working in its Networking and Wireless businesses around the world. Then in 2002, after several years investing in and managing (with very mixed results!) start-up companies in the satellite and terrestrial broadband wireless access areas, Dave retired to Vancouver Island within sight of UBC (on a clear day) across the Strait of Georgia.