Tektronix (the Oscilloscope people) built a line of early Unix workstations
based on the National 16032 (which was the 16-bit bus version of the 32032).
These machines were the Tektronx 6130 and the later Tektronix 4132. I have
running examples of each. These machines ran a Tek-hacked version of 4.2bsd
called UTek. The machines were essentially a single-board
computer that had the CPU, some on-board RAM (1MB), a ST-506 hard disk
interface (on the 6130) or SCSI-I Interface (on the 4132) a floppy
controller (on the 6130), two serial ports, a GPIB port, an
AUI connector for 10Mb Ethernet, and a bus interface that allowed various
option boards (RAM, Async, Parallel, SCSI, GPIB) to be plugged in.
These machines were actually pretty cool for their time...and if Tek
would have marketed them properly, the could have competed with
Sun's machines. But, Tek was an instrumentation company, and they
really didn't know very well how to market a Unix workstation. Tek
made another attempt at the market with the 43xx workstations, but
these used Motorola 68K and 88K CPU's, and never really did very will
with them.
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Web Museum
http://www.geocities.com/oldcalculators
Received on Fri Oct 20 2000 - 16:41:19 BST