The story of a small team - in Sony, mostly a consumer goods company(*) - creating a workstation and then a line of workstations.
Doi had imagined a continuation of Sony’s efforts in office automation (OA), particularly building on the legacy of the SMC-70, a business oriented computer introduced years before. But the team had other ideas. They wanted to build a UNIX workstation that could replace the DEC VAX systems they relied on daily.
(The Playstation hook is a bit far-fetched, but that’s only the final paragraph!)
The first prototype was ready in just six months. By October 1986, the project was announced, and in January 1987, the first NEWS workstation, the NWS 800 series, officially launched. It ran 4.2BSD UNIX and featured a Motorola 68020 CPU. Its performance rivaled that of traditional super minicomputers, but with a dramatically lower price point
By the end of 1989, Sony introduced the NWS 3860, its first NEWS model powered by a MIPS R3000 processor. The move to MIPS architecture was a major turning point. While Motorola chips had served them well, MIPS offered a simpler and more scalable design philosophy. It also came with a practical benefit: Sony’s own semiconductor division could license and build on MIPS technology in-house.
Sony’s foray into portable UNIX machines also began during this time. In 1990, the company released the NWS 1250, a heavy but movable workstation equipped with a 68030 CPU. Two years later, it followed with BigNEWS, model NWS 3150, which used a MIPS R3000 running at 40 megahertz.
In 1995, Sony released the NWS 7000. It was a technical powerhouse, featuring four MIPS R10000 processors running at 200 megahertz with full 64 bit processing. On paper, it was one of the most capable UNIX workstations ever built by a Japanese company.
From the article:
(*) But see also a previous article: The Birth of Sony Computers [unlocked]
Inside, the Series 35 ran on an 8-bit Z80 CPU with a proprietary Sony operating system. It was a single-tasking machine, with only the printer control running in the background through basic spooling. Every boot required a system disk, with a second floppy for saving documents—there was no hard drive, no non-volatile memory. Yet for its time, the Series 35 was a marvel of compact, reliable design.
…
One of the most intriguing aspects of the new system [SMC-777, still Z80 based] was its promotion of “Dr. Logo,” an educational programming language developed by MIT’s Dr. Seymour Papert. Sony saw the educational value in “Logo” and worked with Digital Research to port it to the SMC-777. This made this updated model an appealing choice for students and teachers alike, introducing a simple yet engaging way to learn programming by drawing shapes on screen using the “Turtle” cursor. Alongside Dr. Logo, the 777 was bundled with 777-BASIC, 777-Assembler, and 777-MEMO, among other software, further enhancing its appeal to hobbyists and educators.
via Liam Proven on mastodon
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