WCW MG-1 Personal workstation : Byte review

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2 total messages Started by louie Sun, 24 Feb 1985 06:20

#153

Author: louie
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 1985 06:20

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I'm sure by now others have seen the review in the Febuary 1985 issue
of BYTE on the Whitechapel Computer Works MG-1 personal workstation.  It
is described in the BYTE U.K. column starting on page 379. [Pause while
audience rushes to BYTE mag...].  The starting price seems to be around
5500 british pounds;  if you know what the current exchange rate is you'd
have a better idea how good a deal that is!

Hardware: 8 MHz NS32016 processor, 32082 MMU, 32081 FPU, 512KB memory 
expandable to 8MB in 512KB chunks.  100KB used for 1000 x 800 pixal bit
mapped display.  Floppy and winnie too. Ethernet and GENIX (4.1BSD).

According to review, implementation seems to be anti-APPLE; i.e. use hardware
instead of software to do things.  Like hardware support for RasterOps on the
display and for the mouse.

Looks real neat, and maybe an affordable UNIX workstation for home/personal
use.  Anyone have any more info that's didn't appear in the BYTE article, or
perhaps actually seen/used one of these?

-- 

Louis A. Mamakos  WA3YMH
Computer Science Center - Systems Programming
University of Maryland, College Park

Internet: louie@umd5.arpa
UUCP: ..!{seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!louie

Re: WCW MG-1 Personal workstation : Byte review

#166

Author: Nick Vasilatos
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 1985 23:39

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> I'm sure by now others have seen the review in the Febuary 1985 issue
> of BYTE on the Whitechapel Computer Works MG-1 personal workstation.
> Anyone have any more info that's didn't appear in the BYTE article, or
> perhaps actually seen/used one of these?
> 

Whitechapel Computer Works was at Comdex last November looking for 
distributors for the MG-1 presumably. Their system was very impressive
in the flesh.

Software was at that time was too fragile for customer interaction
but demos were truly impressive. Nice window manager. Pixel drawing
rate was high. They were using half height peripherals, there was not
a whole lot of space for expansion in the box. Styling is striking
(but you've already seen 4BSD), the cabinet looked great too.

I would really love to lay hands on one. The two I saw in November were
numbers 19 and 20 or there abouts. Could be some time before they 
are in real production. They said they planned to manufacture in the
US eventually. They were in the process of re-implementing their main
board with PALs to reduce the density (which was amazing).

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