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Aucbvax.4716 fa.editor-p utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!editor-people Tue Oct 27 17:22:37 1981 Re: Hardware and Editor Technology >From CSL.BKR@SU-SCORE Tue Oct 27 16:38:57 1981 Stanford University Computer Systems Lab has designed and built a personal workstation that does not have a local disk. It is based around an MC68000. The vanilla SUN machine, as we call them, has a 68000 processor, 256Kbytes of memory on the processor board, a graphics board with a 1024x1024x1 frame buffer, and a 3Mbit Ethernet processor board. They are connected by a Multibus protocol, and housed in an 8-card cage with room for various expansions.

These machines are being built by a company called CadLink, in Troy Michigan; they can be bought for something like $7k or so right now, in unit quantities. In large quantities, the parts cost of this machine in today's prices is under $2000, so it is not unreasonable to expect it to be available for about $5000 in a couple of years.

We currently use the Ethernet as a virtual disk, sending out for disk blocks to a shared central VAX. We expect soon to have Unix Emacs running native on the SUN machine; a local industrial lab has got Unix 32V running on a wirewrap version of the machine.

We expect that about 80% of the computing needs of a high-quality multifont display editor can be handled by the local processing power of a SUN, and that 95% of the computing needs of a monofont display editor can be handled by the SUN. With the addition of a 512KB memory expansion board, the machine can probably be programmed to survive quite will without a local disk, though it will be very straightforward to put a disk on it since it has a standard Multibus interface.

Brian -------

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