Oh, advertising copywriters, how could you say this? It’s the “accessible peak of performance” and it’s built on a 12MHz 68000, serving “up to 7” users with a UCSD p-system. Certainly it got great results on Basic benchmarks.
The new TDI Pinnacle — the fastest micro in the world.
Running at 12 MHz, the new TDI Pinnacle will take your
breath away!It can execute a staggering 3 million instructions per second and service 7 users as fast as most personal computers service one.
If you’re a Programmer, you’ll be delighted that the compiler can handle 3,000 lines per minute.
If you’re in Business, Finance, Education or Industry, you can harness TDI Pinnacle’s immense speed to the task with a mountainous range of existing software.
One thing’s for sure, other micros are having an uphill struggle competing with it.
A little after this advert in May 1985, in October the same year, TDI launched an upgrade, running at 16MHz and with a second 68000 to handle I/O, which could apparently support 16 users.
However, it seems the p-system only gave each process 64k to work with. We learn this on a page about Sage computers, designed in Nevada, also p-system machines based on 68k, and at an earlier date resold by TDI, from their premises in Clifton, Bristol.
After Sage became Stride Computer, they introduced a model called the Stride 440; it was an evolution of the Sage IV. The 8 MHz 68000 was replaced with a 10 MHz 68010, and much more DRAM (e.g. 8 MB) was on hand. This extra power was not of much use for people who used the UCSD p-System OS since individual users were still limited to 64 KB code and 64 KB data. Apparently most users of this machine switched to using A Unix variant or even CP/M-68K.