I love the watercolor and hand-drawn diagrams. Makes this look like a truly artisan crafted machine -- lovingly crafted, all the way down to the documentation.
Their logo is really pretty too!
Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]
51–60 of 163 posts
Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]
#52Seems the anything is editable ux is similar to plan 9?
Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]
#53You can see that the image of the four CPU boards on page six is actually a quad exposure of a single CPU board being moved around. Seems kinda wonky to me.
The hand-drawn watercolor diagrams on the next few pages are neat though
Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]
#54Used these for several years. The Apollo Domain OS is still a thing of wonder to learn from.
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).
Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]
#55Even 10-15 years later, multiple CPUs and 128Mb RAM was quite uncommon. How much did this beast cost back in the 80s? Edit: Max configs were up to $250,000 ($663,937.02 today) back then according to this price list: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apollo/Apollo_Price_List_Jul88....
I'm triggered every time I see things like "$663,937.02 today". I just can't help it. There should be a word for [mindlessly] reporting the results of a calculation to arbitrary precision when only one significant digit of precision is warranted. There probably is such a word in German.
Another issue is that computer prices are really hard to compare across time, especially for systems targeted at businesses. Do you just use the CPI? Why is that meaningful? Do you use the one for IT? (Then it would be like, "$250,000 in 1989 ($1,400 today)") Something in-between? How do you capture the notion that workstations of this era were basically the first generation that allowed businesses to computer-aid stuff they used to do on paper, bringing a massive productivity boost?
Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In some respects, the VLIW design can be thought of as "super-RISCy", as it offloads the instruction selection process to the compiler as well. In the VLIW design, the compiler examines the code and selects instructions that are known to be "safe", and then packages them into longer instruction words. For instance, for a CPU with two functional units, like the PRISM, the compiler would find pairs of safe instructio…
Nobody cared about virtualization when those systems were designed, other than IBM (and compatible) mainframe designers. None of that generation of workstation/server architecture - MIPS, SPARC, HP-PA, Alpha or for that matter 68k - had that as a consideration.
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Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]
#57The UK government ran an initiative in the mid 1980s to get electronics CAD into every university and polytechnic. The institution I worked for got a lab of DN300 and DN500 workstations running various digital and SPICE-based tools. We used them for undergrad classes and also for some consultancy projects. They felt like a huge leap to us. To put it in perspective, our other labs at the time were either CP/M or mainframe terminals.
Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]
#58Same Apollo company where original version of uuid came from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifie...
Also the http:// syntax in urls.
And DCE/RPC
Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]
#59Even 10-15 years later, multiple CPUs and 128Mb RAM was quite uncommon. How much did this beast cost back in the 80s? Edit: Max configs were up to $250,000 ($663,937.02 today) back then according to this price list: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apollo/Apollo_Price_List_Jul88....
I used to have an Alpha server from that vintage with I think 512MB of RAM. Came on two daughterboards full of 32K (or maybe 16K) SIMMs.
I had a Alpha 21164PC[1] on an 164SX motherboard with 512MB RAM back around that time. That thing absolutely flied. I installed Debian on it and I remember compiling and running Gnome 1.x from scratch on it. Fun times.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_21164#Alpha_21164PC_(PCA...
Re: Apollo DN10000: Quad CPU/128Mb RAM workstation from 1988 [pdf]
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume a 486 was dramatically slower than the Apollo PRISM (which looks reasonably well-designed by today's standards).
It was probably not dramatic if it was slower at all, there is a reason so many of those workstation processors died out in the 90s.
I at first thought a 486 was probably faster, but that Apollo CPU has 64 bit data path apparently. It might have been a beast. I didn't even know Apollo used anything but Motorola 68k CPUs.