23 Jul
2011
23 Jul
'11
5:47 p.m.
Briefly, WICAT (<I'll-look-this-up> Institute for Computer Assisted
Training) started as an educational software company in Orem Utah that
expanded into making its own multi-user hardware to support its software.
Its strengths included the MCS (Multiuser Control System) operating system
which was strongly influenced by VMS (the MCS creators used VMS at BYU and
tried to bring its good features to the MC68000 systems). They subsequently
ported UNIX to their hardware after entering the more generic "workstation"
market.
Their fancy graphics co-processors were an initial result of trying to bring
better display capabilities for educational materials.
They eventually retreated back to a software-only company as the
workstation/mega-microcomputer (68000-based) market saturated.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Al Kossow" <aek at bitsavers.org>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 12:03 PM
Subject: Re: Wicat WS-150
On 7/22/11 10:31 AM, Shoppa, Tim wrote:
Brochure you point out looks like it may have
been aiming at a similar
market.
They were desktop workstation/server folks selling Unix and their own
VMS-Like
OS. The integrated graphics was more high-end than the people selling SUN
workstation
CPU's, but not as fancy as Valid or CadLink/CimLink. I turned up one of
the later
CimLink CPU boards on eBay a couple weeks ago. Don't know if I'll bother
with the
29116 graphics board he had also listed.