3b1
Encyclopedia
The 3B1 was a Unix workstation
computer
originally developed by Convergent Technologies
(later acquired by Unisys
), and marketed by AT&T
in the mid- to late-1980s. Despite the name, the 3B1 had little in common with AT&T's other 3B-series computers
.
Release 2, with
extensions from 4.1 and 4.2BSD
, System V Release 3 and Convergent Technologies. The last release was 3.51.
repository which was available for all 3B1 users.
Workstation
A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
originally developed by Convergent Technologies
Convergent Technologies (Unisys)
Convergent Technologies was an American computer company formed by a small group of people who left Intel Corporation and Xerox PARC in 1979....
(later acquired by Unisys
Unisys
Unisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...
), and marketed by AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
in the mid- to late-1980s. Despite the name, the 3B1 had little in common with AT&T's other 3B-series computers
3B Computers
The 3B series computers were a line of micro-programmable minicomputers produced by AT&T Computer Systems's Western Electric subsidiary.-High-availability processors:The original series of 3B computers include the models 3B20C, 3B20D, 3B21D, and 3B21E....
.
Hardware configuration
- 10 MHz MotorolaMotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
MC68010 (16 bit external bus, 32 bit internal) with custom MMUMemory management unitA memory management unit , sometimes called paged memory management unit , is a computer hardware component responsible for handling accesses to memory requested by the CPU... - Internal MFMModified Frequency ModulationModified Frequency Modulation, commonly MFM, is a line coding scheme used to encode the actual data-bits on most floppy disk formats, hardware examples include Amiga, most CP/M machines as well as IBM PC compatibles. Early hard disk drives also used this coding.MFM is a modification to the original...
hard drive, originally 5 MB, later models with up to 67 MB - At least 512K RAM on main board, expandable via expansion cards
- 3 expansion slots
- Monochrome green phosphor 10 inches (254 mm) monitor
- Internal 300/1200 bit/s modemModemA modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
PC7300
The initial PC700 model offered a very limited 512 KB of memory and an extremely slow 5 MB hard drive. This model, although progressive in offering a Unix system for desktop office operation, was painfully slow and had an aggravating 'grinding' noise even when not in active use. The modern-looking "wedge"design was innovative, and in fact the machine gained notoriety appearing in many movies as the token "computer".AT&T 3B1
A later enhanced model was renamed "3B1". The cover was redesigned to accommodate a full-height 67 MB hard drive. This cover change added a 'hump' to the case, expanded onboard memory to 1 or 2 MB, as well as added a better power supply.Operating system
The operating system is based on UNIX System VUNIX System V
Unix System V, commonly abbreviated SysV , is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by American Telephone & Telegraph and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, termed Releases 1, 2, 3 and 4...
Release 2, with
extensions from 4.1 and 4.2BSD
Berkeley Software Distribution
Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...
, System V Release 3 and Convergent Technologies. The last release was 3.51.
Programming languages
- SMC BASICBASICBASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
- RM COBOLCOBOLCOBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments....
- RM FORTRANFortranFortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
- LPI FORTRAN
- LPI Pascal (programming language)Pascal (programming language)Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...
- LPI C (programming language)C (programming language)C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
- SVS FORTRAN
- SVS Pascal
- AT&T BASIC
- GNU C++C++C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
- LISPLispA lisp is a speech impediment, historically also known as sigmatism. Stereotypically, people with a lisp are unable to pronounce sibilants , and replace them with interdentals , though there are actually several kinds of lisp...
Application software
- SMART System (Office Suite)
- InformixInformixIBM Informix is a family of relational database management system developed by IBM. It is positioned as IBM's flagship data server for online transaction processing as well as integrated solutions...
(DBM) - OracleOracle databaseThe Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....
(DBM) - MultiplanMultiPlanMultiplan was an early spreadsheet program developed by Microsoft. Known initially by the code name "EP" , it was introduced in 1982 as a competitor for VisiCalc....
(SpreadsheetSpreadsheetA spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...
)
Word processors
- Microsoft WordMicrosoft WordMicrosoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
- AT&T Word Processor
- Crystalwriter
- WordStarWordStarWordStar is a word processor application, published by MicroPro International, originally written for the CP/M operating system but later ported to DOS, that enjoyed a dominant market share during the early to mid-1980s. Although Seymour I...
2000 - Samna Word
- WordMarc
- SMART Word Processor
Games
- Pacman
- NetHackNetHackNetHack is a single-player roguelike video game originally released in 1987. It is a descendant of an earlier game called Hack , which is a descendant of Rogue...
- Chess
- Klondike
- Life
- Mahjongg
- MoriaMoria (computer game)Moria is a roguelike computer game based heavily on J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings. The game's objective is to kill a Balrog, presumably Durin's Bane, deep within the Mines of Moria. A later port of Moria called Umoria inspired the Angband roguelike game...
- Robots
- Rocks
- Rogue
- TetrisTetrisTetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic...
Utility
- HoneyDanBer UUCPUUCPUUCP is an abbreviation for Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers. Specifically, a command named uucp is one of the programs in the suite; it...
package. - Various Shells: BourneBourne shellThe Bourne shell, or sh, was the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7 and most Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh - which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic link or hard link to a compatible shell - even when more modern shells are used by most users.Developed by Stephen Bourne at AT&T...
, CC shellThe C shell is a Unix shell that was created by Bill Joy while a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley in the late 1970s. It has been distributed widely, beginning with the 2BSD release of the BSD Unix system that Joy began distributing in 1978...
, and KornKorn shellThe Korn shell is a Unix shell which was developed by David Korn in the early 1980s and announced at USENIX on July 14, 1983. Other early contributors were AT&T Bell Labs developers Mike Veach, who wrote the emacs code, and Pat Sullivan, who wrote the vi code... - EMACSEmacsEmacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
- Kermit
- TeXTeXTeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
- SPICE/NUTMEG (circuit simulation tool)
The Store
The Store is a public domain softwarePublic domain software
Public domain software is software that has been placed in the public domain, in other words there is absolutely no ownership of the intellectual property that the software represents....
repository which was available for all 3B1 users.
Expansion Cards
- DOS-73 8086Intel 8086The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978, when it was released. The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture of Intel's future processors...
co-processor card running MS-DOSMS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
, which could be fitted with an 8087 math co-processor chip. This board was designed and built for AT&T by Alloy Computer ProductsAlloy Computer ProductsAlloy Computer Products is an Australian manufacturer of information technology products based near Melbourne. As of 2007, the company currently markets networking and VoIP products. The company was originally based in Framingham, Massachusetts and by 1990 was part of the Fortune 500. At one point...
of Framingham MA. - RAM card could be added using 1 or 2 MB RAM cards (up to a maximum of 4 MB)
- EIA/RAM combo cards contained extra RAM and two RS-232RS-232In telecommunications, RS-232 is the traditional name for a series of standards for serial binary single-ended data and control signals connecting between a DTE and a DCE . It is commonly used in computer serial ports...
serial ports. - Dual EIA port card
- StarLANStarLANStarLAN was the first implementation of 1 megabit per second Ethernet over twisted pair wiring. It was standardized by the standards association of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers as 802.3e in 1986, as the 1BASE5 version of Ethernet.-Description:StarLAN was developed by AT&T...
1Mbps LAN card - EthernetEthernetEthernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
10 Mbps LAN card - VoicePower card allowed for the capture and digital recording of voice conversations.
- Tape driveTape driveA tape drive is a data storage device that reads and performs digital recording, writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and long archival stability.A tape drive provides...
card provided interface for 23 MB MFM Tape Cartridge Drive. - Expansion chassis card was hard-wired to Expansion Chassis (with five added slots)