The Firefox was build as a product in the late ’80s by Workstation Systems Engineering, which was down the street from us at the Systems Research Center in Palo Alto. It was maybe inspired by Firefly but had an entirely different design.
I see this topic came up once before here, in 2019: https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2019-August/018389.html
On Jun 9, 2025, at 15:16, Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> wrote:
My rare items are only Unix-adjacent. I have a Digital “Beta” prototype, the first Alpha machine in a PC form factor. It runs OSF-1, or would if I can find the SIMMs I borrowed from it :). I have some boards for a Digital Firefly, a research vax multiprocessor that ran a Modula-2 based OS that would run Ultrix binaries.
That's incredibly cool. Do you know if any of the Firefly machines survived? I saw a VAXstation 3540 for sale at some point recently but it was well out of my price range; I hope it found a good home.
-Henry