22 Apr
2001
22 Apr
'01
8:45 p.m.
Date: 21 Apr 2001 3:1:14 +0100
From: "Iggy Drougge" <optimus(a)canit.se>
Subject: Odd old Xerox equipment
computer equipment. Today, I happened to notice a very sexy
Xerox machine. It was a black, rather fat tower with a very
black front with relief stripes. On top of it sat an equally
black diskdrive, its front as black the computer. I
think it would fold down to reveal the actual slot. The back
featured a number
of very large blanking plates for graphics (I think a D15) and AUI.
What kind of system was it, when was it released, what OS did
it run? Can I marry it?
What a find!! Snap it up right now! Sounds like an 1186 to me,
since the company is an AI company. In their attempt to remarket
the Star Xerox redesigned the 8010 hardware and came up with the
"Dove", which was marketed as the 6085 "Documenter" or the 1186
"Artificial Intelligence Workstation". I think the only difference
in the hardware was the 1186's processor board had a floating-point
unit - other than that they were identical machines differing only
in the microcode and software. The 6085 ran the "ViewPoint" system,
originally know as "Star" and later renamed "GlobalView" :-) You
don't have any access to the guts of the machine from ViewPoint,
it's a closed system that's specifically designed to write documents,
send email, all that boring "office" stuff - there was no development
environment that you could access via ViewPoint, so it's not that
much fun to play about with. When you've done one document you've
done them all :-) The development environment was usually installed
in a seperate volume on the machine, and went by the name of "Tajo"
or "XDE" - this was another window-based environment with all the
good stuff like a Mesa compiler, debugger, file browser etc (guess
which environment I used the most!). If you knew the magic runes you
could set up the debugger/development volume to "debug" the VP volume
and be able to swap between the two, but it could be a bit of a pain
because a clean VP boot would take around 15 minutes :-/
Xerox attempted to market VP standalone after it was clear they'd
missed the boat as far as mass adoption of Star (another 914 it
certainly wasn't) - they had a version running on Suns, my memory's
a bit hazy now, I think the project was called "Salient" and involved
the use of the "Portable Common Runtime" - basically a Mesa virtual
machine(?). They also had a version for Windows - I think it originally
ran on a separate Mesa processor card and then later they implemented
a complete software Mesa VM to run VP/GV on. Unfortunately they still
didn't get many sales, and the rest is (literally) history. Star RIP.
[Incidentally I still use it on my laptop, Star still gives Word & co
a good run for their money! There's at least one corner of England
that is "forever Xerox" :-)]
The 1186 was much more straightforward - the processor was microcoded
for InterLISP-D, which took up the whole machine. Ran like a dog, but
was very nice to play around in (assuming you could handle all the
brackets) because of the GUI. Personally I liked Mesa way better.
A bit of Xerox folklore for you :-) Aparrently the 6085/1186 case was
designed to look like the Xerox Tower in Rochester, NY... can't see
much resemblence myself, other than it's tall and thin(ish). What do I
know though, I'm just a dumb programmer not an "artist" :-)
Cheers
Al.
PS always on the lookout for old Xerox stuff myself - unfortunately
I'm stuck in Bath (UK) and they're are hard to come by as Bill Gates
fans on this list :-)