AbstractA basic satellite system consists of a minicomputer, with card reader and line printer, emulating the Remote Job Entry (RJE) workstation of a mainframe manufacturer. The addition of a disk stroe increases the range of facilities which can be offered by such a system. Apart from a number of subsidiary advantages, this leads to a system which can interface a community of computer users to its mainframe computing facilities, and hence to a user image which is stable over some long period of time. The paper outlines how an advanced satellite system was simply assembled from four basic components. These components were written in different languages by different institutions, but the use of a standard message passing programming interface provided a sound framework for the detection and elimination of errors.
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