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Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

jim.rees.org

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Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#101

Post by the-rc »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #83
mjg59 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh to be fair I think the main reason Zorro III RAM cards didn't appear until way after the first Zorro III machine is that Zorro III wasn't coupled to CPU speed so sticking RAM there wasn't great from a performance perspective - you really needed to use the CPU slot to extend beyond 18MB (remember the 2MB of Chip in addition to the 16MB of Fast) in a useful way

The studio I worked at during that time actually did have a CPU slot based memory extension that can handle I believe up to 256 Mb, this would have been around 92 or 93, but I'm not sure how early it was offered on the market that's just when I started there and it was already in the shop. I don't recall the name of it though but I remember that it was a peculiar PCB design, with part of it resembling a breadboard. I…

You didn't mention what machine this was on. Since you mention a breadboard, are you sure it wasn't an addon to an existing CPU card? Perhaps the X-Calibur, that plugged into the Commodore A3640? That's a bit later, though.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#102

Post by rasz »

hypercube33 wrote: post #36
system2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pentium 2 was released in 1997 and was released with maximum speed of 450 MHZ which could be overclocked much higher.

In 98 I ordered a p3 500mhz with 128mb and planned to upgrade to 384mb. before it even shipped out to me Intel announced the 550mhz irrc or 10% faster. two years later at least 50% faster with the 700mhz and copper mine. Things moved rapidly back then.

500 was released in February 99. 550 4 months later, 700 five more months later. $700 worth of CPU performance from February 1999 could be had in a low end March 2000 system with $130 CPU. In 2001 500MHz system was already obsolete.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#103

Post by TheAmazingRace »

supportengineer wrote: post #90
anthk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From 1988 you would watch b/w or 4 colours on PC made for offices being really expensive, and from y2k you could play DivX videos and TV at home. And from 2k-2k1, even under Unix at home too (something unthinkable by 1988) with some nice GNU/Linux distro :D. The technology change from 1988 to 1998 was really huge, much more compared to what you could get since 2010 until today.

You should look up “Commodore Amiga”, it was way more powerful than PC

Although the Amiga was quite a neat piece of kit when it first came out in 1985, I disagree with your comment unfortunately. The custom chipset sorta "froze" the Amiga design to a particular level and it was very hard to make meaningful upgrades, unlike PCs, where you could slap a new CPU into the CPU socket, or a new video accelerator, sound card, etc, into the ISA or PCI busses.

Yes I realize there were accelerator cards for Amigas later on, like the BlizzardPPC, but they weren't an officially supported option by Commodore (most accelerators came out after Commodore was pronounced dead in 1994) and were more like kludges.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#104

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

carstenhag wrote: post #77
flemhans wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Überpräzisionsberichterstattung

Would be possible but seems overcomplicated. Why not just "Überpräzisierung"? This is actually in use.

Maybe, haven't heard it IRL though. As opposed to the more vague 'Übergründlich'.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#105

Post by rasz »

stevenwoo wrote: post #92
Aardwolf wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does cooping at AMD mean, does it mean a contract job? What is a 80186 clone group (a division at AMD designing 80186 clone CPUs, or a hobby group of 80186 PC enthusiasts?) But these machines are from 1988, wouldn't one be designing 386 or even 486 clones at that time?

Co-op is a term used by some universities for alternating a work semester at a company with school semester in class in the USA for 2nd/3rd/4th year students. We were paid something like 10-15 an hour which was much better than most non professional work jobs. The group I was in was making money off of refinements and continual production of AMD 80186 chips for drop in replacements for Intel 80186 at a lower cost. Th…

Why tho? AMD had full license and even AM386 shipped with 1:1 copy of Intel microcode ripped directly from reverse engineered die shots.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#106

Post by stare_spb »

ur-whale wrote: post #61

I worked on one of these, this was a nice machine. Unix was a little weird, but the graphics subsystem was very impressive for the time, almost on par with SGI's offering.

Yes, from available sources, 3D hardware on DN10000VS was also state-of-the-art, capable of texture mapping, antialiasing and depth buffer. Some additional info for those who are interested https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/97879.97912

Fascinating to see real users in the comments, you're very welcome to share any experience you had with a machine :-)

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#108

Post by genpfault »

hanche wrote: post #64
kstrauser wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and me both! When I see something like "a blue whale can be nearly 100 feet (30.48m) long", I want to throw a math book at the author. "Nearly 100 feet" is "nearly 30 meters". "About $250K" is "about $660K today" at best.

Not to mention the number of times you see geographical locations specified to nanometer precision.

https://xkcd.com/2170/

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#109

Post by rbanffy »

hulitu wrote: post #54
whartung wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Apollos and Domain have any real presence in the vintage community? Casually, I have never seen it mentioned. My very brief Domain experience was that it had a very similar shell style UX, with cryptic, Unix style commands (i.e. ld vs ls) making very “tounge tying” for someone comfortable with Unix. We had a very early Apollo with some CASE software that nobody was particularly interested in, so it pretty well jus…

As far as i remember, their hard drives were prone to failure (the motor will not spin off).

As someone who lives in a place where shipping one would be more expensive than the machine itself, are there any good emulation options?

Even if we need to deal with the lack of Domain/OS specific keys.

Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]

#110

Post by rbanffy »

jnaina wrote: post #74

Had access to this beautiful machine, during my Computer Graphics course in the late 80s. Brings back memories.

What I really loved about the graphics is that having two superimposed frame buffers with alpha and z-buffering it'd be a great gaming platform.

A $700K (in 2024 dollars) gaming machine, that is.

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