TEK UNIX history

From: Rick Bensene <rickb_at_bensene.com>
Date: Tue Aug 3 23:27:05 2004

I did make a few mistakes and an omission in my posting about Tek's
computer history.

First off, the MDP products did start out with the 8002, but that
was through the acquisition of a company called (I believe) Millenium Systems.

The 8550 and 8560 (I miswrote it as 8260) did use LSI-11's. The 8550 I
think ran DOS-50 (I think it only had two 8" floppy drives), and
the 8560 was the one that ran UNIX, although I'm positive
the OS wasn't UTek. It was more an AT&T System-III variant (as
opposed to UTek, which had its roots in 4.2bsd). I can't
remember what they called it, but it wasn't UTek. I used
to have an 8560 with single Qume DT-8 floppy drive and the Micropolis
40MB 8" drive. Thing sounded like a small jet plane at takeoff when
the drive was spinning up. Gave it away a long time ago. Wish I hadn't.

There was a predecessor to the 6130 that ran UTek. It was called the 6205.
These were 32032-based machines. Much more powerful than the 6130.
They could be had with framebuffers for GUI. I think that they had very
early X-Windows servers that ran on them. The display processor I think
was based on a National 32016. Tek sold a BUNCH of these at a
company "fire sale" when the product was discontinued. They sold for
fractions of pennies on the dollar. A lot of local Teks or ex-Teks
might even still have some of these in their garages/attics/storage units.

-Rick
Received on Tue Aug 03 2004 - 23:27:05 BST

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