The Jacquard J100 was a memory mapped
CRT system, the base unit including two 8" single-sided
floppy drives. An external disk controller allowed connection to
hard disk drives, such as the Pertec D3000. The CPU of the
J100 was more that of a 16 bit mini computer than a microprocessor,
using the National Semiconductor's IMP16 bit-slice
design
Click the image on the left for the IMP16 Instruction Guide
Five PMOS integrated circuits were used: four identical RALU
(Register Arithmetic Logic Unit) providing the data path, and
one CROM, Control and ROM, providing control sequencing and
microcode storage.
Each RALU chip provided a 4-bit slice of the register and
arithmetic portion of the processor,
the four chips work in parallel, providing a longer 16 bit word
length. Each RALU chip provided 4 bits of the program counter,
several registers, the ALU, a 16-word LIFO stack, and the status
flags
Click
the image on the right for the J100 overview and early pricing
The OS was Jacquard's SystemII
Systems were shipped with Type-Rite, a word
processing system and Data-Rite, a data management system abd
various other companies wrote their own software, usually
written in Super-Basic
The system was expandable with "dumb" satellite J105 terminals,
which connected to the J100 via RS232 serial cabling for keyboard
data and coax for the CRT display
The Jacquard J500 was composed of a central unit, keyboard/monitor
and two floppy disk-drives. External hard-disks could be
connected directly via ribbon cable. The J500 was unique at its time
because all of the CPU and ALU function was stored in micro code
stored in a bank of 32 PROMS
The Pertec D3000 disk drive was a 24 Meg fixed/removable platter
device, using a standard 19-inch panel width, 26 inch depth, 8
3/4 inches height, 130 lbs weight. It used a powerful
electromagnetc voice coil system to provide R/W head seek and an
optical reticule sensor system produced interference fringes to
provide closed loop feedback control.
"The D3000 is designed with the serviceman in mind. It has built-in,
and easilyaccessible, hinged circuit boards which eliminate the need
for extender boards thus enabling the serviceman to troubleshoot
faults without having to unplug boards"
Some engineers might remember the joys of setting up the servo
electronics with an oscillioscope on a 1 track repetitive seek and
'tweeking the pots' i.e. adjusting the many potentiometers that
changed the reticule/voice coil waveform.. in an interconnected way!
Engineers
also carried CE packs (Customer Engineer) which had special tracks
wriiten to allow 'Cat's Eye' head alignment
The drive used 'flying head' technology, which used aerodynamic
forces to keep the R/W heads lifted microns off the oxide magnetic
material coated onto the disk platters. Diagrams like the one on the
right were common in computer rooms to inform users of the need not
to smoke near the drive, as this could cause a 'head crash'
Read/Write Heads
Altos
Computer Systems started as a CPM/MPM computer vendor
but by 1983 Altos was the leading 8086-based Unix vendor, running
Xenix
The Altos 8600 used an 8086 CPU with a 8089
communications co-processor
and 8" hard disk and floppy drive and 128/512 RAM
It could run CPM, MPM, Oasis and Xenix
The Altos 586/986 also ran Xenix, the Microsoft version of the UNIX
operating system, single-user CP/M or multi-user MP/M - its casing
opened up for easy maintenance and upgrades, as shown below
The lower PCB held the 8086 CPU and 512K of RAM with a Z80 I/O
processor supporting six serial ports, floppy disc access and RS422
LAN (AltosNet)
The upper PCB supported the hard disk and tape controller and
another large PCB could be installed to enable ethernet networking
and four additional serial ports.
The Altos 68000 (click below for brochure) was a
16 user system running
Unix System III based on the Motorola 68000 processor
running at 8 MHz with 40/80 Mb hard disk
It also ran the first version of the Oracle database
As the brochure on the left shows (click for full document) the
Altos 68000 supported RS422 AltosNet (or WorkNet) and also Ethernet
Before moving to their software only Netware product, Novell
originally produced a hardware product in 1983, which supported
multiple clients running both CP/M and MS-DOS over a proprietary star network
technology called S-Net
The Novell file server, shown above and on the right) used the
Motorola 68000 processor and shared a hard disk.
Novell also wrote an application, a game
called Snipes. shown in the video below, which engineers used
to test the network operation - it was probably the first network
application ever written and it is now seen as the forerunner of
many multiplayer games such as Doom and Quake
Click for a text file of the Snipes game details
Engineers
also carried CE packs (Customer Engineer) which had special tracks
wriiten to allow 'Cat's Eye' head alignment 
