Misplaced Pages

#852147

68-596: The PERQ , also referred to as the Three Rivers PERQ or ICL PERQ , is a pioneering workstation computer produced in the late 1970s through the early 1980s. It is the first commercially-produced personal workstation with a graphical user interface (GUI). The design of the PERQ was heavily influenced by the original workstation computer, the Xerox Alto , which was never commercially produced. The workstation

136-503: A $ 12,000 (equivalent to $ 29,000 in 2023) "personal workstation" might be a high-end PC like Macintosh II or IBM PS/2 Model 80 , low-end workstation, or a hybrid device like the NeXT Computer , all with similar, overlapping specifications. One differentiator between PC and workstation was that the latter was much more likely to have a graphics accelerator with support for a graphics standard like PHIGS or X Window , while

204-692: A CAD system used for creating circuit diagrams on the PERQ, was written by Dario Giuse at CMU. Workstation Workstations formerly offered higher performance than mainstream personal computers , especially in CPU , graphics , memory, and multitasking. Workstations are optimized for the visualization and manipulation of different types of complex data such as 3D mechanical design, engineering simulations like computational fluid dynamics , animation , video editing , image editing , medical imaging , image rendering, computational science , generating mathematical plots , and software development . Typically,

272-433: A SCSI hard disk and was housed in a desktop "mini-tower"-style enclosure. The operating system was a port of UNIX System V Release 2 called PNX 300. Prototype units were produced in 1985, but the project was cancelled before full production commenced (the project had run late and ICL decided it was a solution provider - it would sell Sun workstations as part of the solution). Another workstation design under development at

340-467: A Zilog Z80 microprocessor , an IEEE-488 interface, an RS-232 serial port , hard and floppy disk interfaces and speech synthesis hardware. PERQ 1s also had a spare Optional I/O (OIO) board slot for additional interfaces such as Ethernet . A graphics tablet was standard. Most PERQ 1s were supplied with an 8½ ×11-inch, 768×1024 pixel, portrait orientation , white phosphor monochrome monitor. The PERQ 2 (codenamed Kristmas during development)

408-636: A perk , that is an additional employee benefit. In June 1979, the company took its very first order from the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the computer was officially launched in August 1979 at SIGGRAPH in Chicago. 3RCC later entered into a relationship with the British computer company International Computers Limited (ICL) in 1981 for European distribution, and later co-development and manufacturing, as

476-452: A 16-bit bus), a 12 or 24 MB, 14-inch Shugart SA-4000-series hard disk , and an 8-inch floppy disk drive. The internal layout of the PERQ 1 was dominated by the vertically mounted hard disk drive. It was largely this that determined the height and depth of the chassis. A basic PERQ 1 system comprised a CPU board, a memory board (incorporating the framebuffer and monitor interface) and an I/O board (IOB, also called CIO). The IOB included

544-541: A consequence, the conversion of early popular arcade games to home consoles was difficult, not only because the home computing capability was lower, but also the screen orientation was mismatched and the home user could not be expected to set their television on its side to show the game correctly. This is why most early home versions of arcade games have a wide, squashed appearance compared to the full-quality arcade versions. Modern arcade emulators are able to handle this difference in screen orientation by dynamically changing

612-472: A display that could be used in either portrait or landscape mode. As video display technology advanced, eventually, the video display board was able to accommodate rotation of the display and a variety of different resolutions and scan rates. When the Macintosh computer was introduced, WYSIWYG page layout using Aldus PageMaker became popular. The Macintosh rekindled interest in portrait displays, and

680-448: A forced-air fan. However, for larger, heavier projectors, there is a problem mounting the projector sideways since nearly all ceiling mounts assume the projector hangs down from the mount in an upside-down landscape position. Extra-heavy bracing or weighted counterbalancing may be required to support a projector in a sideways portrait orientation. For modern projectors using an Hg-lamp (Mercury-vapor lamp), turning them sideways will shorten

748-532: A full-page illustration be printed landscape, the inscription or caption beneath must read from foot to head." Portrait mode was first used on the Xerox Alto computer, which was considered technologically well ahead of its time when the system was first developed. Xerox product marketers did not understand how revolutionary the system was, and the portrait display faded away while common landscape-display televisions were appropriated for use as an inexpensive early microcomputer display. The IBM DisplayWriter had

SECTION 10

#1732790666853

816-587: A large (at the time) amount of disk storage. The Crosfield team in Hemel Hempstead developed an early RAID solution that supported up to 8 SCSI controllers operating in parallel with data streaming from 5¼-inch full-height drives and a fast fibre-optic network known as GALAN. Prototypes were running in late 1986 in both the US and UK and volume production from Crosfield's Peterborough factory started early 1987. Various optional OIO boards were produced for

884-483: A large backspace key at first, substituting a key widely used in computer software writing. Within a short period of time, the DisplayWriter and other dedicated word processors were no longer available. For the first computing devices a screen was built to operate in only portrait or landscape mode, and changing between orientations was not possible. Typically a custom video controller board was needed to support

952-411: A megapixel display (roughly 1000×1000 pixels), and one " MegaFLOPS " compute performance (at least one million floating-point operations per second). RFC 782 defines the workstation environment more generally as "hardware and software dedicated to serve a single user", and that it provisions additional shared resources. This is at least one order of magnitude beyond the capacity of the personal computer of

1020-571: A microinstruction cycle period of 170 ns (5.88 MHz). The original PERQ (also known as the PERQ 1 ), launched in 1980, was housed in a pedestal-type cabinet with a brown fascia and an 8-inch floppy disk drive mounted horizontally at the top. The PERQ 1 CPU had a WCS comprising 4k words of 48-bit microcode memory. The later PERQ 1A CPU extended the WCS to 16k words. The PERQ 1 could be configured with 256 KB, 1 or 2 MB of 64-bit-wide RAM (accessed via

1088-950: A much higher price. Workstations have typically driven advancements in CPU technology. All computers benefit from multi-processor and multicore designs (essentially, multiple processors on a die ). The multicore design was pioneered by IBM's POWER4 ; it and Intel Xeon have multiple CPUs, more on-die cache, and ECC memory. Some workstations are designed or certified for use with only one specific application such as AutoCAD , Avid Xpress Studio HD, or 3D Studio Max . The certification process increases workstation prices. Modern workstations are typically desktop computers with AMD or NVIDIA GPUs to do high-performance computing on software programs such as video editing , 3D modeling , computer-aided design , and rendering . By January 2009, all RISC -based workstation product lines had been discontinued: In early 2018, RISC workstations were reintroduced in

1156-538: A number of rotating CRT monitors as well as software which could be used as a driver for many video cards. The later advent of the World Wide Web , whose pages are largely in portrait mode, failed to result in a widespread return to portrait displays. As of November 2011, for instance, HP no longer sold monitors in portrait mode, although they have a display stand which permits the user to attach two monitors and rotate either from landscape to display. Rotation

1224-509: A personal workstation suitable for 2D CAD costing $ 5,000 (equivalent to $ 12,000 in 2023) to $ 25,000 (equivalent to $ 61,000 in 2023) was available from multiple vendors. Mid-range models capable of 3D graphics cost from $ 35,000 (equivalent to $ 86,000 in 2023) to $ 60,000 (equivalent to $ 147,000 in 2023), while high-end models overlapping with minicomputers cost from $ 80,000 (equivalent to $ 197,000 in 2023) to $ 100,000 (equivalent to $ 246,000 in 2023) or more. By then

1292-467: A portrait monitor and keyboard with large backspace key , as it was designed for use in word processing instead of spreadsheets . Lanier, Wang , and CPT also made competing dedicated word processing computers with portrait modes. The height of the market for these computers was the late 1970s and early 1980s, prior to the introduction of the IBM PC . However, according to a long-time regional manager of

1360-580: A result of interest from the UK Science Research Council (later, the Science and Engineering Research Council). The PERQ was used in a number of academic research projects in the UK during the 1980s. 3RCC was renamed PERQ System Corporation in 1984. It went out of business in 1986, largely due to competition from other workstation manufacturers such as Sun Microsystems , Apollo Computer and Silicon Graphics . Brian Rosen, one of

1428-611: A second RS-232 port, and (on the EIO board) an Ethernet interface. The PERQ 3A (otherwise known as the ICL 3300 Advanced Graphics Workstation) was developed by ICL as a replacement for the PERQ 2. The PERQ 3A had an all-new hardware architecture based around a 12.5 MHz Motorola 68020 microprocessor , 68881 floating-point unit and 68450 Direct Memory Access Controller, plus two AMD 29116A 32-bit bit slice processors which acted as graphics co-processors. It also had up to 2 MB of RAM,

SECTION 20

#1732790666853

1496-472: A second disk to be installed internally. The T4 model (of which only around 10 are thought to have been produced) had an extended 24-bit CPU and backplane bus, allowing the use of a 4MB RAM board. The PERQ 2 retained the PERQ 1's OIO slot, but replaced the IOB with either an EIO (Ethernet I/O) or NIO (Non-Ethernet I/O) boards. These were similar to the IOB, with the addition of a non-volatile real-time clock ,

1564-661: A series of IBM POWER9 -based systems by Raptor Computing Systems. In October of 2024 System 76 introduces The Thelio Astra an Arm workstation aim for autonomous car industry. Most of the current workstation market uses x86-64 microprocessors. Operating systems include Windows , FreeBSD , Linux distributions , macOS , and Solaris . Some vendors also market commodity mono-socket systems as workstations. These are three types of workstations: A high-end desktop market segment includes workstations, with PC operating systems and components. Component product lines may be segmented, with premium components that are functionally similar to

1632-475: A similar role for technical computing. Sun's thin clients include the Sun Ray product line. However, traditional workstations and PCs continued to drop in price and complexity as remote management tools for IT staff became available, undercutting this market. A high-end workstation of the early 1980s with the three Ms, or a "3M computer" (coined by Raj Reddy and his colleagues at CMU), has one megabyte of RAM,

1700-402: A single person sitting at the console. It was introduced in 1959. One peculiar feature of the machine is that it lacks any arithmetic circuitry. To perform addition, it requires a memory-resident table of decimal addition rules. This reduced the cost of logic circuitry, enabling IBM to make it inexpensive. The machine is codenamed CADET and was initially rented for $ 1000 per month. In 1965,

1768-491: A special display is required that is designed to be pivoted. Some CRT monitors are designed to permit rotation into portrait mode. For the remainder, technical issues can occur when turning a standard CRT monitor or television on its side: Rotation of LCD monitors is simpler than for bulkier displays since the mass of the panel is low, the heat generated is low, and there are no magnetic effects to be concerned about. Higher quality panels can feature built-in pivot points to allow

1836-423: A traditional operating system and perform computations locally, with storage on a remote server . These are intended to reduce the initial system purchase cost, and the total cost of ownership , by reducing the amount of administration required per user. This approach was first attempted as a replacement for PCs in office productivity applications, with the 3Station by 3Com . In the 1990s, X terminals filled

1904-684: A workstation in the modern sense), is the Alto developed at Xerox PARC in 1973. Other early workstations include the Terak 8510/a (1977), Three Rivers PERQ (1979), and the later Xerox Star (1981). In the early 1980s, with the advent of 32-bit microprocessors such as the Motorola 68000 , several new competitors appeared, including Apollo Computer and Sun Microsystems , with workstations based on 68000 and Unix . Meanwhile, DARPA 's VLSI Project created several spinoff graphics products, such as

1972-539: Is now a common feature of modern video cards, and is widely used in tablet PCs (many tablet devices can sense the direction of gravity and automatically rotate the image), and by writers, layout artists, etc. Operating systems and drivers do not always support it; for example, Windows XP Service Pack 3 conflicts with monitor rotation on many graphics cards using ATI's Catalyst control software, Nvidia's proprietary drivers for Linux do not support screen rotation unless manual changes are made to its configuration. Portrait mode

2040-445: Is popular with arcade games that involve a vertically oriented playing area, such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong . The vertical orientation allows greater detail along the vertical axis while conserving detail on the sides. Although the early Vectrex home console had a built-in, vertically-oriented screen, the majority of home games consoles were designed to interface with standard television sets, which use landscape orientation. As

2108-444: Is preferred for editing page layout work, in order to view the entire page of a screen at once without showing wasted space outside the borders of a page, and for script-writing, legal work (in drafting contracts etc.), and other applications where it is useful to see a maximum number of lines of text. It is also preferred for smartphone use, as a phone in portrait orientation can be operated easily with one hand. Landscape viewing, on

PERQ - Misplaced Pages Continue

2176-434: Is still used occasionally within some arcade and home titles (either giving the option of using black bars or rotating the display), primarily in the vertical shoot 'em up genre due to considerations of aesthetics, tradition and gameplay. Games made primarily for mobile devices are often designed around portrait mode play. Modern video cards can offer digital screen rotation capabilities. However, for it to be used correctly,

2244-416: Is viewed from the side, and image contrast is adjusted by tilting the panel up or down. By rotating the screen 90 degrees, the varying contrast axis is now horizontal and a viewer to one side will see a washed out light contrast image, while a viewer on the other side sees a very dark contrast image. Projectors can generally operate from any angle due to the compact, rigid design and a cooling system utilizing

2312-455: The IBM 1130 scientific computer became the successor to 1620. Both of these systems run Fortran and other languages. They are built into roughly desk-sized cabinets, with console typewriters. They have optional add-on disk drives, printers, and both paper-tape and punched-card I/O. Early workstations were generally dedicated minicomputers , a multiuser system reserved for one user. For example,

2380-618: The PDP-8 from Digital Equipment Corporation , is regarded as the first commercial minicomputer. Workstations have historically been more advanced than contemporary PCs, with more powerful CPU architectures, earlier networking, more advanced graphics, more memory, and multitasking with sophisticated operating systems like Unix. Because of their minicomputer heritage, from the start workstations have run professional and expensive software such as CAD and graphics design, as opposed to PCs' games and text editors. The Lisp machines developed at MIT in

2448-516: The Silicon Graphics 3130 . Target markets were differentiated, with Sun and Apollo considered to be network workstations and SGI as graphics workstations. RISC CPUs increased in the mid-1980s, typical of workstation vendors. Competition between RISC vendors lowered CPU prices to as little as $ 10 per MIPS, much less expensive than the Intel 80386 ; after large price cuts in 1987 and 1988,

2516-453: The form factor is that of a desktop computer , which consists of a high-resolution display, a keyboard , and a mouse at a minimum, but also offers multiple displays, graphics tablets , and 3D mice for manipulating objects and navigating scenes. Workstations were the first segment of the computer market to present advanced accessories, and collaboration tools like videoconferencing . The increasing capabilities of mainstream PCs since

2584-562: The IBM personal computer division, speaking in confidence to the author of this entry in the mid-1980s, when the IBM PC was introduced, no portrait mode was made available for two reasons: (1) Top management did not want the PC division to undermine the DisplayWriter product, (2) The computer was designed with spreadsheets and software development in mind, not word processing. Thus, it had a keyboard without

2652-608: The PERQ 1 and 2: 3RCC OIO boards provided a 16-bit parallel PERQlink interface (intended for downloading microcode from another PERQ at boot time) plus Ethernet or a Canon CX laser printer controller. Thus, a PERQ 2 could be configured with two Ethernet ports (EIO plus OIO). A dot-matrix printer could also be connected to the RS-232 or IEEE-488 ports. Other third-party OIO boards were produced to interface to other devices, such as QIC -02 tape drives or video cameras . The PERQ's original p-Code -like instruction set (called Q-Code )

2720-726: The PERQ. These included: ICL and 3RCC contracted with the Edinburgh Regional Computing Center (ERCC) over 1981-1982 to supply an optimised Fortran77 compiler. This also resulted in an Imp compiler being created, as the F77 compiler from the ERCC was written in Imp. The ERCC compilers generated Q-Code. By 1987, maintenance of the PERQ compiler suite had been taken over by a commercial spin-off group of ex-ERCC employees, Edinburgh Portable Compilers Ltd (EPCL). The PERQ

2788-637: The Quadra 700 was an intriguing option at a fraction of the cost" as resource-intensive software such as Infini-D brought "studio-quality 3D rendering and animations to the home desktop". The Quadra 700 can run A/UX 3.0, making it a Unix workstation. Another example is the Nvidia GeForce 256 consumer graphics card, which spawned the Quadro workstation card, which has the same GPU but different driver support and certifications for CAD applications and

PERQ - Misplaced Pages Continue

2856-449: The companies that make the products tend to have comprehensive repair/replacement plans. As the distinction between workstation and PC fades, however, workstation manufacturers have increasingly employed "off-the-shelf" PC components and graphics solutions rather than proprietary hardware or software. Some "low-cost" workstations are still expensive by PC standards but offer binary compatibility with higher-end workstations and servers made by

2924-606: The concept of " aspect ratio " replaces that of "page orientation"). Many types of visual media use landscape mode, especially the 4:3 aspect ratio used for classic TV formatting, which is 4 units or pixels wide and 3 units tall, and the 16:9 aspect ratio for newer, widescreen media viewing. Most paper documents use portrait orientation. By default, most computer and television displays use landscape orientation, while most mobile phones use portrait orientation (with some flexibility on modern smartphones to switch screen orientations according to user preference). Portrait mode

2992-410: The consumer models but with higher robustness or performance. A workstation-class PC may have some of the following features: Page orientation Page orientation is the way in which a rectangular page is oriented for normal viewing. The two most common types of orientation are portrait and landscape . The term "portrait orientation" comes from visual art terminology and describes

3060-525: The dimensions used to capture a person's face and upper body in a picture; in such images, the height of the display area is greater than the width. The term "landscape orientation" also reflects visual art terminology, where pictures with more width than height are needed to fully capture the horizon within an artist's view. Besides describing the way documents can be viewed and edited, the concepts of "portrait" and "landscape" orientation can also be used to describe video and photography display options (where

3128-531: The early 1970s pioneered some workstation principles, as high-performance, networked, single-user systems intended for heavily interactive use. Lisp Machines were commercialized beginning 1980 by companies like Symbolics , Lisp Machines , Texas Instruments (the TI Explorer ), and Xerox (the Interlisp-D workstations). The first computer designed for a single user, with high-resolution graphics (and so

3196-449: The early 2000s, this difference largely disappeared, since workstations use highly commoditized hardware dominated by large PC vendors, such as Dell , Hewlett-Packard , and Fujitsu , selling x86-64 systems running Windows or Linux . Workstations are older than the first personal computer (PC). The first computer that might qualify as a workstation is the IBM 1620 , a small scientific computer designed to be used interactively by

3264-471: The first portrait displays for it were developed by Radius Inc. . After several years of producing the first Macintosh portrait display, Radius introduced the Radius Pivot Display that could be freely rotated between landscape and portrait with automatic orientation changes done by the video controller. Building on this technology, Portrait Display Labs leapt into this market niche, producing

3332-421: The former usually depended on software rendering or proprietary accelerators. The computer animation industry's needs typically caused improvements in graphical technology, with CAD using the same improvements later. BYTE predicted in 1989 "Soon, the only way we'll be able to tell the difference between traditional workstations and PCs will be by the operating system they run", with the former running Unix and

3400-460: The founders of 3RCC, also worked at Xerox PARC on the Dolphin workstation. The PERQ CPU was a microcoded discrete logic design, rather than a microprocessor . It was based around 74S181 bit-slice ALUs and an Am2910 microcode sequencer. The PERQ CPU was unusual in having 20-bit wide registers and a writable control store (WCS), allowing the microcode to be redefined. The CPU had

3468-468: The late 1990s have reduced distinction between the PCs and workstations. Typical 1980s workstations have expensive proprietary hardware and operating systems to categorically distinguish from standardized PCs. From the 1990s and 2000s, IBM 's RS/6000 and IntelliStation have RISC -based POWER CPUs running AIX , and its IBM PC Series and Aptiva corporate and consumer PCs have Intel x86 CPUs. However, by

SECTION 50

#1732790666853

3536-598: The latter running OS/2 , classic Mac OS , and/or Unix. Many workstations by then had some method to run increasingly popular and powerful PC software such as Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Word . The magazine demonstrated that year that an individual could build a workstation with commodity components with specifications comparable to commercially available low-end workstations. Workstations often featured SCSI or Fibre Channel disk storage systems, high-end 3D accelerators , single or multiple 64-bit processors , large amounts of RAM , and well-designed cooling. Additionally,

3604-447: The option of the PERQ 1's portrait monitor or a 19-inch, 1280×1024 landscape orientation monitor. Due to manufacturing problems with the original 3RCC PERQ 2 (also known as the K1 ), ICL revised the hardware design, resulting in the PERQ 2 T1 (or ICL 8222). The later PERQ 2 T2 (ICL 8223) and PERQ 2 T4 models replaced the 8-inch hard disk with a 5¼-inch hard disk, which also allowed for

3672-549: The other hand, visually caters to the natural horizontal alignment of human eyes at the same time landscape details are much wider than they are taller, and is therefore useful for portraying wider visuals with multiple elements that need to be observed simultaneously. In the 1932 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary , the entry for " frontispiece " gave: "The frontispiece … may be printed either upright (termed portrait) or broad way (termed landscape). If

3740-458: The right of the screen respectively. The Facit Twist was a video terminal whose A4-sized monitor could be oriented in portrait mode, showing an 80-column, 72-line character display (employing a 7 x 16 pixel font), or in landscape mode, showing an 80-column, 24-line character display (employing a 16 x 20 pixel font). The monitor could be "twisted" or pivoted by ninety degrees to select the appropriate viewing mode. The Corvus Concept also offered

3808-476: The same as the consumer market, and the price differential narrowed. For example, most Macintosh Quadra computers were originally intended for scientific or design work, all with the Motorola 68040 CPU, backward compatible with 68000 Macintoshes. The consumer Macintosh IIcx and Macintosh IIci models can be upgraded to the Quadra 700 . "In an era when many professionals preferred Silicon Graphics workstations,

3876-422: The same vendor. This allows software development to take place on low-cost (relative to the server) desktop machines. Workstations diversified to the lowest possible price point as opposed to performance, called the thin client or network computer . Dependent upon a network and server, this reduces the machine to having no hard drive, and only the CPU, keyboard, mouse, and screen. Some diskless nodes still run

3944-536: The screen resolution to allow the portrait oriented game to resize and fit a landscape display, showing wide empty black bars on the sides of the portrait-on-landscape screen. Bandai's handheld WonderSwan console was designed to be used both vertically and horizontally, and certain Nintendo DS games, such as Sonic Rush and Mr. Driller Drill Spirits would use its two landscape screens together to make one portrait-orientated play field. Portrait orientation

4012-634: The time of the company's demise, the PERQ 3B was a colour model (sometimes referred to as the PERQ 5 ) was taken over by Crosfield Electronics for its Crosfield Studio 9500 page layout workstation. The workstation was also known internally as Python, was developed in 1986 jointly by MegaScan and Conner Scelza Associates (both in Gibsonia, PA , U.S.A.) and the Crosfield team (in Hemel Hempstead , England). MegaScan, led by Brian Rosen, developed

4080-486: The time. The original 1981 IBM Personal Computer has 16 KB memory, a text-only display, and floating-point performance around 1  kFLOPS ( 30 kFLOPS with the optional 8087 math coprocessor. Other features beyond the typical personal computer include networking, graphics acceleration, and high-speed internal and peripheral data buses. Another goal was to bring the price below one " megapenny ", that is, less than $ 10,000 (equivalent to $ 28,000 in 2023), which

4148-463: The unusual screen orientation, and software often needed to be custom-written in order to support the tall, narrow screen layout. However, rotating displays were attempted in early computer-aided typesetting products, such as the Xenotron XVC-2 which permitted the rotation of the screen and fascia between landscape and portrait orientations, with the disk drives occupying a position below or to

SECTION 60

#1732790666853

4216-405: The user to rotate the screen into portrait mode. However, as a result of the light polarization technology, an LCD monitor, particularly TN panels , the angle of image viewability will degrade when rotated. Liquid crystal displays vary in contrast when viewed from different angles along one axis. This axis is normally oriented to be vertical so that the image quality appears unchanged when the screen

4284-535: The workstation electronics and Conner Scelza Associates (led by Jerry Conner and Don Scelza) ported UNIX and wrote all the other supporting software. Crosfield (led by Andrew Chapman) were the overall project managers and had embedded engineers in MegaScan (Simon Butler and Mark Somervail) and Conner Scelza (Roger Willcocks). The Crosfield requirement was for a very high performance graphics system (known as Viper, developed by their subsidiary benchMark Technologies) and

4352-523: Was a popular early graphical workstation; therefore, it helped spawn many early third-party applications that took advantage of the graphical user interface and bitmapped graphics . Intran (around 1982) produced a pioneering graphical program suite called MetaForm, which consisted of the separate Graphics Builder, Font Builder, Form Builder, and File Manager programs. The PERQ also served as a dedicated platform for several pioneering hypertext programs, such as ZOG , KMS , and Guide . DP ("Drawing Program"),

4420-448: Was achieved in the late 1980s. Throughout the early to mid-1990s, many workstations cost from $ 15,000 to $ 100,000 (equivalent to $ 200,000 in 2023) or more. The more widespread adoption of these technologies into mainstream PCs was a direct factor in the decline of the workstation as a separate market segment: Since the late 1990s, the workstation and consumer markets have further merged. Many low-end workstation components are now

4488-429: Was announced in 1983. The PERQ 2 could be distinguished from the PERQ 1 by its wider, ICL-designed cabinet, with a lighter-coloured fascia, vertical floppy disk drive and three-digit diagnostic display. The PERQ 2 used the same 16k WCS CPU as the PERQ 1A and had a 3-button mouse in place of the graphics tablet. It was configured with a quieter 8-inch 35 MB Micropolis Corporation 1201 hard disk, 1 or 2 MB of RAM and had

4556-399: Was conceived by six former Carnegie Mellon University alumni and employees: Brian S. Rosen, James R. Teter, William H. Broadley, J. Stanley Kriz, Raj Reddy and Paul G. Newbury, who formed the startup Three Rivers Computer Corporation (3RCC) in 1974. The name "PERQ" was chosen both as an acronym of " Pascal Engine that Runs Quicker," and to evoke the word perquisite commonly called

4624-443: Was optimized for Pascal (specifically, an extended PERQ Pascal). Q-Code instructions could be executed at a rate of up to 1 million instructions per second . This gave rise to the alternative definition of the PERQ name: Pascal Evaluation Real Quick . In fact it was generally more efficient to use Pascal than to attempt to create " assembly language " programs directly with Q-Code. A variety of operating systems were developed for

#852147