At 12:32 PM 1/12/01 -0500, Tim May wrote:
The Tandem Computers "NONSTOP" was a product line in use by various government agencies for secure (fault-tolerant) computing for a long time. I'd look there for starters.
(I thought this was too speculative, but given Tim's guess..) I have also thought that NONSTOP refers to fault-tolerant under high-RF conditions. Also useful when flying (etc.) near your own antennas, dishes, etc. A sort of military version of the FCC standard for consumer electronics: doesn't emit bad (informative) radiation, accepts bad radiation without interference. Note that shielding that worked for tempest would also help nonstop; and that some of the gear at a testing site (antennas) serves both purposes. (After reading Harmon Seaver's piece) Since this is the NSA, maybe they were testing that high-RF environments didn't cause info leakage -someone else tests that the stuff simply works under field conditions. Maybe the thing they wanted not stopped was tempest protection.