Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
ability, Aegis never really took off, and when the market demanded standardized operat-
ing systems, Apollo switched to Domain/IX (which was a Unix clone). It is likely that
Apollo would have captured an even larger market if they had had changed to Unix at an
earlier time, as Sun (the other large workstation manufacturer) had done. The Token Ring
network was excellent in its performance, but suffered from several problems, such as the
difficulty in tracing faults, and the difficulty in adding and deleting nodes from the ring.
Over time, Ethernet eventually became the standard networking technology, as it was
relatively cheap and easy to maintain and install. Apollo attacked directly at the
IBM/DEC mainframe/minicomputer market, and soon developed a large market share of
the workstation market. The advantage that workstations had over mainframes is that
each workstation had its own local resources, including a graphical display, and typically,
windows/graphics-based packages. Mainframes and minicomputers tended to be based on
a central server with a number of text terminals. Apollo were successful in developing the
workstation market and their only real competitor was Sun. Hewlett-Packard eventually
took Apollo over. However, Apollo computers, as with the classic computers, such as the
Apple II and the Apple Macintosh, were well loved by their owners and some would say
that they were many years ahead of their time. There are many occurrences of Apollo
computers working continuously for five years, with only short breaks for Xmas holi-
days, and so on. After a skilled network manager set them up, they tended to cause few
problems. No crashes, no hardware problems, no network problems, no software incom-
patibilities. Nothing. Aegis, as Unix does, supported a networked file system, where a
global file system could be built up with local disk resources. Thus, a network of 10
workstations, each with 50 MB hard disks allowed for a global file system of 500 MB.
Seagate Technology . Seagate become a market leader for hard disk drives when they
developed a 5.25-inch Winchester disk, with four platters and a capacity of 5 MB.
Philips/Sony . These companies developed the CD-Audio standard for optical disk stor-
age of digital audio. At the same time, Sony Electronics introduced a 3.5-inch floppy disk
and drive, double-sided, double-density, which had a capacity of 875 KB (but less, when
formatted).
Texas Instruments . TI were busy adding peripherals to their TI 99/4 computer, includ-
ing a thermal printer (30 cps on a 5·7 character matrix), a command module ($45), a mo-
dem, RS-232 interface ($225), a 5.25-inch mini-floppy disk drive which could store up to
90 KB on each disk. The floppy disk controller cost $300, and the disk drive cost $500.
Digital Research . DR released CP/M-86 for Intel 8086- and 8088-based systems. Digital
Research could have easily become the Microsoft of the future, but for a misunderstand-
ing with IBM.
One of the few companies who developed a system around the Zilog Z8000 processor was
Onyx. The Onyx C8002 microcomputer was a powerful computer which contained 256 KB
RAM, a tape backup, a hard disk, serial ports for eight users, and the UNIX operating sys-
tem. Its cost was $20000.
1.4
80186/80188
Intel continued the evolution of the 8086 and 8088 by, in 1982, introducing the 80186 and
80188. These processors featured new instructions, new fault tolerance protection, and were
Search WWH ::




Custom Search