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I actually like Sun boxes. They look simple but stylish enough. [Just in case] The box I dropped at that studio was, sadly, an HP. It may have been a Visualize

I actually like Sun boxes. They look simple but stylish enough. [Just in case] The box I dropped at that studio was, sadly, an HP. It may have been a Visualize X-Class [0], which was ugly but at least it was new and modern at the moment. But most probably it was just a Kayak XU [1]. Those things were ugly and they weighted a ton and we dumped them everywhere with some 3D card and a RAM upgrade. [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HP-PC-Workstations-X-Class-Workstations_02.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HP-PC-Workstations-X... [1] https://imgur.com/gallery/iGWCK5m https://imgur.com/gallery/iGWCK5m

neilv 5y ago
To a designer, I would guess those really look like midtower PCs someone was told to spiff up, and they came out looking... much like midtower PCs, with powder blue and other bits. :) HP also made some other attempts... Our HP 9000/3xx HP-UX porting workstations had a decent very sturdy lab HP modular/stackable boxes, with a reasonably stylish grill that unified them. It also wasn't a mismatch, now that I think of it, for some other HP gear I had personally, like a 2392A terminal I had. HP 9000/7xx (HP-UX on the hot new HP-PA architecture) were different, and not as carefully standardized-looking that I recall. I once saw some very interesting minicomputer(?) design in a museum that might've been HP? It was built into a desk. For targeting cosmetic-sensitive designers, pivoting engineering workstation vendors could've taken a cue from Next, or some of the more clean white Macs over the years (even the Apple IIgs). Or gone wild and daring like SGI (which was maybe analogous to the fruit iMacs, in that it might look cheap if you didn't know what it was, and it really wanted attention). Update: Here's what Sun did with the PC midtower, when they made the 386i to run SunOS 4 with SunView, and possibly be a gateway for PC users to migrate. I used one of these for a while as my main workstation, and it was nice. It looked a bit like a PC midtower that had been refined and had high build quality. https://web.archive.org/web/20160402201116/http://sites.inka.de/pcde/site/sun386i_files/sun386i_1_1.JPG https://web.archive.org/web/20160402201116/http://sites.inka...

neilv 5y ago

To a designer, I would guess those really look like midtower PCs someone was told to spiff up, and they came out looking... much like midtower PCs, with powder blue and other bits. :) HP also made some other attempts... Our HP 9000/3xx HP-UX porting workstations had a decent very sturdy lab HP modular/stackable boxes, with a reasonably stylish grill that unified them. It also wasn't a mismatch, now that I think of it, for some other HP gear I had personally, like a 2392A terminal I had. HP 9000/7xx (HP-UX on the hot new HP-PA architecture) were different, and not as carefully standardized-looking that I recall. I once saw some very interesting minicomputer(?) design in a museum that might've been HP? It was built into a desk. For targeting cosmetic-sensitive designers, pivoting engineering workstation vendors could've taken a cue from Next, or some of the more clean white Macs over the years (even the Apple IIgs). Or gone wild and daring like SGI (which was maybe analogous to the fruit iMacs, in that it might look cheap if you didn't know what it was, and it really wanted attention). Update: Here's what Sun did with the PC midtower, when they made the 386i to run SunOS 4 with SunView, and possibly be a gateway for PC users to migrate. I used one of these for a while as my main workstation, and it was nice. It looked a bit like a PC midtower that had been refined and had high build quality. https://web.archive.org/web/20160402201116/http://sites.inka.de/pcde/site/sun386i_files/sun386i_1_1.JPG https://web.archive.org/web/20160402201116/http://sites.inka...