3 ms·

I see. I never considered that especially important then, and I don't now, but OK then. In that case, I submit the Acorn R140 workstation running RISC iX. http

I see. I never considered that especially important then, and I don't now, but OK then. In that case, I submit the Acorn R140 workstation running RISC iX. http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3639/Acorn-R140/ http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3639/Acorn-R140/ RISC iX is broadly BSD 4.3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_iX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_iX A contemporary news story: https://techmonitor.ai/technology/acorn_fleshes_out_its_unix_workstation_with_peripherals_four_port_expansion_card https://techmonitor.ai/technology/acorn_fleshes_out_its_unix... Here is what BYTE thought of the successor model, the R260: https://vintagecomputers.sdfeu.org/mags/byte/Acorn_R260_review.pdf https://vintagecomputers.sdfeu.org/mags/byte/Acorn_R260_revi...

rjsw 4y ago
Not really workstation-class graphics.
- lproven 4y ago
  They were. The close integration of a fast RISC chip and a framebuffer meant astonishingly good graphics performance for the late 1980s. Bear in mind, this was before VESA local bus existed, before NeXTstep, anything like that. With a 4 MIPS CPU in 1987, you didn't need a dedicated GPU for blazingly-fast graphics. This interactive graphics demo was supplied on a floppy with the machine. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFwpsb75omg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFwpsb75omg Realtime 3D shaded graphics in 256 colours, with no hardware assistance? I'd rate that as workstation class, certainly. This is 2 years before the first SPARCstation, which shipped with a monochrome framebuffer as I recall. The R140 had 1152x900 mono but could display 4096 colours at VGA resolution. http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Acorn/Brochures/Acorn_APP216_AWorldOfStandardsAcornR140Jan89.pdf http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Acorn/Brochu...

rjsw 4y ago

Not really workstation-class graphics.

lproven 4y ago
They were. The close integration of a fast RISC chip and a framebuffer meant astonishingly good graphics performance for the late 1980s. Bear in mind, this was before VESA local bus existed, before NeXTstep, anything like that. With a 4 MIPS CPU in 1987, you didn't need a dedicated GPU for blazingly-fast graphics. This interactive graphics demo was supplied on a floppy with the machine. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFwpsb75omg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFwpsb75omg Realtime 3D shaded graphics in 256 colours, with no hardware assistance? I'd rate that as workstation class, certainly. This is 2 years before the first SPARCstation, which shipped with a monochrome framebuffer as I recall. The R140 had 1152x900 mono but could display 4096 colours at VGA resolution. http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Acorn/Brochures/Acorn_APP216_AWorldOfStandardsAcornR140Jan89.pdf http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Acorn/Brochu...