Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations? - TUHS

26 Jan 2023

...
   * What do I
really mean by workstation? Ex.gr. If an installation had a 
 PDP-11 with a single terminal and operator, is it not a workstation? Is 
 it the integration of display into the system that differentiates?  
 I remember people calling something a workstation,
 if it has the four "M"

 at least 1 MByte memory
 at least 1 megapixel display
 at least 1 mbit/s network
 can't remember the fourth(was there a fourth?) 
I remember it as:

at least 1 MByte memory
at least 1 megapixel display
at least 1 MIPS
cost at most 1 mega penny (10K, maybe 35K in today’s money)

That matches with Wikipedia, for whatever that is worth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M_computer
but note that it talks about 3M not 4M.

With hindsight, not adding in networking speed looks strange -- but maybe the world had
already settled on LAN speeds above 1Mb/s by 1980 (Ethernet, ARCNet)