big bucks for a Tek computer on eBay

Al Kossow wrote: There was also a 4054, which had a (IIRC) 19" DVST CRT with writethru, and used the same 2901-based bit slice implementation of the 6800 instruction set as the 4052. The microcode for the 2901's fully implemented the 6800 instruction set, such that the 4052 would run with the same ROM code as the 4051, but significantly faster. I remember playing an assembly-language written version of Spacewar (using write-thru refreshed graphics mode) on the 4054 which played very smoothly, and had all kinds of neat features. These machines used BASIC as the "operating system", but the BASIC system was very thorough, allowing access to file-system oriented floppy and hard-disk systems, instrumentation controllers (GPIB), and a wide variety of other peripherals. The 4052/4054 were really quite a powerful machines. Tek really had a winner on their hands, but their insistence of sticking with DVST technology, along with sales people who were used to selling oscilloscopes and other test & measurement equipment, just didn't know how to sell computers very well. The 4051, 4052, and 4054 were successful in their time, but their time wasn't long, as raster-display workstations with GUI operating systems and working environments like Apollo, Xerox, Perq, and others started showing up. Tektronix did experiment with an interesting grayscale raster workstation called the Magnolia, which was quite a machine for its time, but, unfortunately, only a limited number were made, and it never became a product, for much the same reasons as why the 4051/2/4 before it weren't market breakers. The Magnolia also used 2901's if I recall correctly, but implemented a much more advanced processor custom-designed by Tek for a standalone workstation. It also had a high-speed display-list display processor that I also believe was 2900-series based. It ran a Xerox PARC-derived SmallTalk environment, and used a 40-Megabyte 8" Micropolis hard disk drive (pre-SCSI). There was one design problem...the machine was in a pedestal-type format (similar to the 4010 DVST terminals), and the disk drive was located in the base of the pedestal (the drive was pretty heavy, so it made sense to put it in the base). Problem is, when people were sitting at the machine, they had a habit of kicking the pedestal, which would shock the drive, and sometimes drive head crashes. Tek had a number of interesting and innovative computer products, but just never really figured out how to sell anything but T&M equipment. All I know is that while I worked there, there were LOTS of old (for the time) decommissioned PDP 8 and PDP 11 systems that they'd just put out on the covered loading docks and wait for someone to haul away. The scrapper folks would regularly check the loading docks and grab the stuff for the gold and other metals. I had some much opportunity to grab some really cool DEC stuff, but just didn't realize it at the time. The PDP8 systems were mostly used for things like circuit board digitizing and creating Gerber Photo-plotter and N/C drill tape images for circuit boards, and the 11's were used (lots of 11/35's) for automated test systems. I don't remember seeing any Straight-8's there, but I may have been there a little late to see then, or just never ran into them of they were there. But, there were tons of PDP 8/I, /L, and /e /m machines. And many PDP 11's running something called WDI Tek BASIC (an inhouse-developed BASIC specifically developed to make PDP-11's into digital oscilloscopes and measurement systems that were the predecessors of fully automated board test systems). Tektronix Wilsonville had a lot of PDP-10 architecture machines, mostly DECSystem 10's and 20's. Don't know what happened to these machines. I think a lot of the development of the Unix System 7-based OS (TNIX, I think they called it) that ran on the Tek 8501 micoprocessor development systems (LSI-11-based), and the later Tektronix UTek workstatioons (6205?, 6130, 4132), and later System V/BSD-Hybrid (4317, 4319 and XD88) were done on these PDP-10-architecture machines, and then later moved to VAXen (later on, VAX 11/780's and later VAXen were a all over the place, displacing just about all of the PDP 8's and 11's). Some VAXen ran VMS, but a lot ran BSD Unix. Later, for shared engineering use, Gould PowerNode 9080's were purchased which really out-performed the VAXen, and cost less. Don't know what happened to all the PDP-10 and VAX architecture stuff. There were a number of Gould 9080's running when I left in 1990, serving as central UNIX resources for a network of terminals (glass TTY's and X-Terminals), as well as NFS fileservers for early UNIX workstations. I just wish I would have been more "aware" back then. Hindsight is truly 20/20. Rick Bensene Tektronix Employee 1977-1990 The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com