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> Was anyone at Acorn paying attention to BSD? Acorn sold BSD derived RISC iX workstations (the hardware was just rebadged Archimedes) from 1988. https://en.w

> Was anyone at Acorn paying attention to BSD? Acorn sold BSD derived RISC iX workstations (the hardware was just rebadged Archimedes) from 1988. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_iX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_iX

flir 6y ago
Had one of those at my VIth Form - think it was an ex-display model Acorn had demo'd at a trade show (suspect it was an A680, it definitely had SCSI). Can't underestimate the lure of that mysterious "real" OS it would boot into. My first exposure to 'nix.
- danellis 6y ago
  My first exposure to Unix was RiscBSD, which was netbsd/arm26 running on a RISC PC. Installed from a pile of floppies downloaded at school. Eventually I got an old Elonex 386 that I could install Slackware on, and with a bit of coax I had a 10base2 home network and was being amazed at the concept of running X clients remotely.
jacquesm 6y ago
They also made a full UNIX workstation called the Unicorn.
- laurencerowe 6y ago
  How were the R-series workstations not ‘full UNIX workstations’? Can you post a link to a description of the Unicorn project?
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    The term 'UNIX workstation' at the time referred to a specific class of machines exemplified by the Apollo and the SUN machines, though, in truth there was all kinds of software running on them. The Torch Unicorn was launched to target that specific market, the idea was to use the 6502 based BBC/Micro as the graphical front-end and then to have a 68K in a separate enclosure running either UNIX System III or a bunch of other OS's. I've seen a demo version of that machine long ago, I don't have any pictures, I didn't think any of this was worth recording at the time, though it was definitely impressive. Please note I used the word 'also', I did not mean to imply the R-series weren't full UNIX workstations, but they came quite a few years after the Unicorn. A later version called the Triple-X ran System V and came with a GUI on the native processor. Edit: found a link with a better description of the Unicorn: http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Torch/Torch_UnicornTechOverview.pdf http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Torch/Torch_... One more with some pics: http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_Sep84_TorchUnicom.pdf http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_S...

flir 6y ago

Had one of those at my VIth Form - think it was an ex-display model Acorn had demo'd at a trade show (suspect it was an A680, it definitely had SCSI). Can't underestimate the lure of that mysterious "real" OS it would boot into. My first exposure to 'nix.

danellis 6y ago
My first exposure to Unix was RiscBSD, which was netbsd/arm26 running on a RISC PC. Installed from a pile of floppies downloaded at school. Eventually I got an old Elonex 386 that I could install Slackware on, and with a bit of coax I had a 10base2 home network and was being amazed at the concept of running X clients remotely.

jacquesm 6y ago

They also made a full UNIX workstation called the Unicorn.

laurencerowe 6y ago
How were the R-series workstations not ‘full UNIX workstations’? Can you post a link to a description of the Unicorn project?
- jacquesm 6y ago
  The term 'UNIX workstation' at the time referred to a specific class of machines exemplified by the Apollo and the SUN machines, though, in truth there was all kinds of software running on them. The Torch Unicorn was launched to target that specific market, the idea was to use the 6502 based BBC/Micro as the graphical front-end and then to have a 68K in a separate enclosure running either UNIX System III or a bunch of other OS's. I've seen a demo version of that machine long ago, I don't have any pictures, I didn't think any of this was worth recording at the time, though it was definitely impressive. Please note I used the word 'also', I did not mean to imply the R-series weren't full UNIX workstations, but they came quite a few years after the Unicorn. A later version called the Triple-X ran System V and came with a GUI on the native processor. Edit: found a link with a better description of the Unicorn: http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Torch/Torch_UnicornTechOverview.pdf http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Torch/Torch_... One more with some pics: http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_Sep84_TorchUnicom.pdf http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Mags/AU/AU_S...