[TUHS] Earliest UNIX Workstations?

John Foust via TUHS tuhs at tuhs.org
Fri Jan 27 02:35:30 AEST 2023


At 01:20 AM 1/26/2023, John Cowan wrote:
>WP says the Terak 8510/a was the first graphical workstation; it came out in 1976-77 and ran the UCSD p-System.  I had never heard of it before. 

I have a dozen or so Teraks (a PDP-11/03 based system) as well as 
many floppies and other inherited items and notebooks from one 
of the Terak founders.  This may seem like a lot but there's another 
guy who might still have a larger collection.

Mini-Unix is described here:

http://www.tavi.co.uk/unixhistory/mini-unix.html

Sixth edition, no MMU.  The Bell memo there is dated January 1977.  

There was a Mini-Unix for the Terak described here in May 1979 but 
I don't think I have a copy.  See page 14...  

https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/159028/UCC_Special%20_Issue_May_1979.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Terak floppies are described here:  

http://www.60bits.net/msu/mycomp/terak/termedia.htm

A memo there says they got their copy in April 1980.

There's no indication that this Mini-Unix can *use* the Terak's mono 
bitmapped display, short of writing your own routines.  Pinning "first"
on computers is always a tricky process.

- John



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