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How were the R-series workstations not ‘full UNIX workstations’? Can you post a link to a description of the Unicorn project?
by 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 agoThe 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...