Sony NEWS
The Sony NEWS (Network Engineering Workstation) was a series of BSD-based Unix workstations sold during the late 1980s and early 1990s. It originally came equipped with a dual 680x0 (68020 or 68030) processor configuration running at 16-25 MHz, later shifting to the MIPS R3000 and R4000 RISC microprocessors. The first NEWS machine was the NWS-800, which originally appeared in Japan in January 1987 and was conceived as a desktop replacement for the VAX series of minicomputers[1][2].
Both 680x0 and MIPS models shared the same case, which had a large door covering a floppy drive and a 5.25-in expansion bay which could house a SCSI tape or CD-ROM drive. The details of the door were slightly different: two windows for the 680x0 models while the MIPS ones had a single large window. Also hidden by the cover were a reset button and a series of DIP switches used to configure some bootup parameters.
On the back were 3 expansion slots, one of which normally housing a video card. Underneath those were the connectors for SCSI, network (an AUI connector), serial (CH0, normally used for console, and CH1), parallel, and a keyboard.
[edit] References
- ^ SONY History 第12章 苦闘する新分野への進出 第2話 社内ベンチャーから生まれた「NEWS」 - Sony official Web site (Japanese)
- ^ IPSJ Computer Museum - Historical Computers in Japan, Workstations - Sony NWS-800 Series (Prototype)
[edit] External links
- Sony History: NEWS – An Independent Venture
- SONY NEWS Series hardware specifications
- Xi FTP service software repository for NEWS-OS 6.1
- webpage about SONY NEWS 1580 (dead link)
- FAQ on running netbsd on a SONY NEWS 68030-based (news68k) workstation. A version for the RISC version is also available.
- History for the Sony NEWS workstations
