[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 12:20:52AM +0100, Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS wrote: "In April 1981, after the initial breadboard Nu Machines were constructed at M.I.T. and the UNIX operating system was ported to it, the design was licensed to Western Digital Corporation to be re-engineered and marketed as a commercial product. By late 1982, Western Digital had completed the redesign but decided not to enter the workstation business. Texas Instruments acquired the Nu Machine/NuBus technology including the original development group located in Irvine, California." pg 1 "The second category of software is the Nu Machine Operating System. This is a port of Bell Lab’s UNIX Operating System. The Nu Machine Operating System is derived from UNIX, Seventh Edition and contains, in addition to the normal UNIX commands and kernel, enhancements from the Berkeley version of UNIX and a proprietary window system for the Nu Machine video display subsystem. Of course, the Nu Machine Operating System will not run on Nu Machines that do not contain a 68010 processor board." pg 35 https://bitsavers.org/pdf/lmi/LMI_Docs/HARDWARE_1.pdf also mentioned on page 20 of http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/perq/RD_Davis/Davis-PERQ_Workstations_Nov03.pdf " MIT Researchers were working on two systems which used the concepts of the Alto using very different technology. This first was known as the Lisp Machine project; the MIT Lisp Machine had all the features associated with a workstation, but was much more expensive. There were two spinoffs of this project which were less costly lisp machines produced by Symbolics and LMI. The other MIT project which evolved from knowlege of the Alto was the Nu machine; this was to be a workstation using a Motorolla 68000 microprocessor as its CPU. In various attempts to turn the Nu machine into a commercially viable product, MIT teamed up with Exxon Enterprises, then Heath/Schlumberger, and then Western Digital. All of these attempts failed. The only thing that resulted from this was a deal between MIT and Western Digital in which Western Digital was to make a Lisp processor board which would plug into the bus of the Nu machine. After some officials from Prime Computer took a tour of MIT and saw the Nu machine, Lisp Machine, and the Alto, it is runmored that the idea for the Apollo workstations was formed. The head of engineering at Prime Computer, William Poduska, started Apollo. Apollo had the added benefit of much more financial backing than Three Rivers had. Apollo introduced its Domain processor."