From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, UNPARSEABLE_RELAY autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 31522 invoked from network); 6 Feb 2023 07:02:32 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 6 Feb 2023 07:02:32 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A87E740A6B; Mon, 6 Feb 2023 17:02:08 +1000 (AEST) Received: from lechuck.jsg.id.au (jsg.id.au [193.114.144.202]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id EA6DB40A6A for ; Mon, 6 Feb 2023 17:01:52 +1000 (AEST) Received: from largo.jsg.id.au (largo.jsg.id.au [192.168.1.43]) by lechuck.jsg.id.au (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTPS id adcbfa1f (TLSv1.3:TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256:NO); Mon, 6 Feb 2023 18:01:49 +1100 (AEDT) Received: from localhost (largo.jsg.id.au [local]) by largo.jsg.id.au (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTPA id 7ac96b56; Mon, 6 Feb 2023 18:01:49 +1100 (AEDT) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2023 18:01:49 +1100 From: Jonathan Gray To: Paul Ruizendaal Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Message-ID-Hash: QNFJ6UQYGAXD2KY65FRXT7CDNFGGGZ6F X-Message-ID-Hash: QNFJ6UQYGAXD2KY65FRXT7CDNFGGGZ6F X-MailFrom: jsg@jsg.id.au X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: tuhs@tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations? List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 12:20:52AM +0100, Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS wrote: > > Herewith some interesting (somewhat) contemporary papers on early windowing systems: > > 1. There was a conference in the UK early in 1985 discussing the state of window systems on Unix. Much interesting discussion and two talks by James Gosling, one about NeWS (then still called SunDew), and one about what seems to be SunWindows. It would seem then that these were developed almost in parallel. > > http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/contents.htm Another window system was Whitechapel Computer Works' Oriel. "During 1985 major developments took place, mainly on the software front. A factor of 6 improvement in graphics performance was obtained, and the Oriel state-of-the-art window manager developed. The Newcastle Connection and SUN's NFS have also been announced as products, available on 42NIX, the Whitechapel release of Berkeley BSD 4.2." http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acd/sus/perq_papers/perq_external/p003.htm http://www.cpu-ns32k.net/Whitechapel.html has a photo of the GUI running on a MG-1 with NS32016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMQ9EvZLSos "Booting 42nix 2.5 on a Whitechapel Computer Works MG-1" from Tom Stepleton who also maintained https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124716/http://mg-1.uk/ https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-02/1985_02_BYTE_10-02_Computing_and_the_Sciences/page/n378/mode/1up has an article on Whitechapel Computer Works and the MG-1, before they changed from Genix to 42nix "The operating system is Genix, a Berkeley 4.1 UNIX customized by WCW to support the MG-1's graphics abilities" http://web.archive.org/web/20030205212745/http://www.galactic.co.uk/iainf/mg1.html "The WCW MG-1 was launched in September 1984 .. The monitor was a large (17 inch) 1024x800 bit-mapped monochrome screen, and there was hardware support for up to 16 mask-shift raster operations at once, modelled after the 3RCC/ICL PERQ raster-ops. ... It ran a kernel based window system called ORIEL (and a SunTools like graphics library called ANGEL), which took full advantage of the raster-op hardware."