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
   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.