Retro Tech: Vintage muscle machines that pushed the limits - jamersonstrapead

Pumping retrospective iron

Since the sunrise of the PC market, just about consumer users have been competent to get along away with the stark minimum of computing mogul. During the PC's first cardinal decades, that typically meant playacting functions like countersign processing, light gaming, and home finance. Typical low-altitude- OR mid-range PCs could handle those tasks with aplomb.

Simply shortly after the world-class personal computers launched in the 1970s, manufacturers began to target businesses, universities, and political science institutions with beefier machines. Those organizations often requisite extra computing musculus for high-tech production or research tasks, and advanced, high-destruction computers also served ingenious users such as graphic designers, TV producers, and musicians.

That's what we're going to look at here—eight vintage "muscle machines" of the 1980s and 1990s that pushed the limits of personal electronic computer capability at the time of their sackin. Consequently, most of these had a high terms to match, which makes them hard to find (and largely forgotten) today.

I'd love to hear virtually your own adventures with vintage muscle machines—whether you secondhand them back in the Clarence Day or you just tinker with them now.

Compaq DeskPro 386 (1986)

Image past IBM

Retail price: $6,499 immoral ($14,120 today, adjusted for inflation) CPU: 16MHz Intel 80386

Get's set about with the prototypal monster upgrade PC, the Compaq DeskPro 386. First introduced in 1986, this IBM PC-compatible beast was the introductory commercial Microcomputer to use Intel's 80386 CPU, which made it in a flash perform twice every bit firm IBM's then-flagship AT computer—and faster than some other clone IBM PC on the market. The DeskPro 386 was basically the most powerful desktop PC in the world. Add to it the ability to financial backing up to 10MB of Tup at a time when most Microcomputer users were happy with 640KB, and you had the recipe for a truly impressive piece of computer hardware. IBM wasn't too happy about being bested by Compaq on its home greensward, of flow; Big Blue released its own 386-based PC the following year, which you will see ahead.

AT&T UNIX PC (1985)

Image by Steven Charles Dillon Stengel

Theme model retail price: $5,590 (almost $12,371 today) C.P.U.: 10MHz Motorola 68010

In the 1980s, industry pundits almost universally thinking that powerful UNIX-based workstations would soon overwhelm and supplant DOS-based IBM PCs As the industry standard. To that end, AT&adenosine monophosphate;T—the creator of UNIX operating system—released a System V UNIX-based machine, the "UNIX PC," in 1985. It enclosed a constitutional monochrome display, a mouse-based windowing Graphical user interface in ROM, support for up to 4MB of RAM, and through serial publication circuit board expansion, could serve equal to six concurrent users (one on the main unit and Little Phoeb on their own serial terminals). That's a lot of capability in a desktop form element.

It's intriguing that while UNIX system did not reign supreme happening the desktop in the 1980s or 1990s, now we see UNIX derivatives and workalikes with a huge global PC footprint in UNIX operating system-supported Mackintosh OS X and iOS, and Linux-based Android. Taken together, those platforms outnumber Windows PCs. So maybe the pundits were right after all—but just off by a couple of decades.

Commodore Amiga 3000 (1990)

Image by Commodore

Base model retail cost: $3,379 (about $6,156 today) CPU: 16MHz Motorola 68030

Commodore ready-made a big splash with its underivative Amiga in 1985 thanks to the machine's noble nontextual matter and strait capabilities and its pre-emptive multitasking GUI-based OS. After a few successor models, Commodore significantly upped the ante in the Amiga space with the completely redesigned Amiga 3000, which sported a past-formidable 16MHz Motorola 68030 C.P.U. (afterwards upped to 25MHz), support for up to 18MB of RAM, a new ECS graphics chipset with VGA support, and a newfound towering-speed DMA SCSI controller for fast hard motor and CD-ROM access. At the time, it was one of the most capable consumer-level PCs in the world—and for the price, it was very hard to beat.

IBM PS/2 Model 80 (1987)

Image by IBM

Base model retail Mary Leontyne Pric: $10,995 (or so $23,048 today) CPU: 20MHz Intel 80386

In 1987, IBM undraped its next big stair in the IBM PC space, the Personal System/2 (PS/2) line, which introduced innovations such equally 3.5-inch diskette support, VGA graphics, OS/2, the Little Channel bus, 72-pin RAM SIMMs, integrated mouse support (through the now-noted PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports), and most significantly, IBM's first 386-based PC. The 386 arrived in the highest-close PS/2 unit, the Model 80, which shipped in a hulking tower-based configuration that could support high to 2MB of RAM and 2 115MB hard drives (consumer ticklish drives were typically all but 20MB at the time, and still really expensive).

Like every last IBM PCs back then, the Poser 80 was built like a tank (out of overlooking-quality components and materials) and carried with it a tank-like price to match: $10,995, which could quickly climb down to $20,000 or more depending on the constellation. To add diss to injury, customers had to buy an operating system (PC-DOS 3.3) for their Model 80 as an add-on item. That'll be $120 excess, delight.

Apple Macintosh IIfx (1990)

Image away Apple

Base model retail price: $9,900 (about $18,037 today) CPU: 40MHz Motorola 68030

"Impious Fast"—that's what Apple's advertising called this impressive workstation, the Mac IIfx, which was the commencement Mac to ship with a 40MHz 68030 Mainframe (its predecessor, the Mackintosh IIx, sported a 16MHz 68030). At the metre of its eject, it was some the fastest and nigh expensive Mac up to now—and beyond the Mac platform, IT was one of the fastest personal computers, menses. It could support adequate to 128MB of Aries, which was an insane total at the time, and care all members of the Mac II cartesian product line, the IIfx could Be dilated with multiple internal NuBus cards, which allowed the IIfx, among other options, to support nonuple high-resolution/high-color graphics card game (technically Eastern Samoa many as there were slots). That successful the IIfx the most varied PC-based digital graphics editing and yield workstation in the humans.

IBM ThinkPad Power Serial 850 (1996)

Image by IBM

Al-Qa'ida model retail price: $12,399 (about $19,374 today) CPU: 100MHz Motorola PowerPC 603e

The PowerPC C.P.U. project originated as a joint project between Apple, IBM, and Motorola to figure a powerful side by side-gen microprocessor that would helper to unseat the Intel microprocessor hegemony. At the time, Intel x86 CPU-based machines (often running DOS or Windows) had already devoured the background and laptop PC markets and were scarcely beginning to fret the workstation and server markets as well. The counterpoison, they hoped, would personify the PowerPC CPU.

Most citizenry probably retrieve Apple's PowerPC-based Macs, but few remember IBM's forays into the PowerPC architecture. Perhaps the most engrossing of those products was the ThinkPad Tycoo Series 850, a bona-fide IBM laptop which shipped with a substantive 100MHz PowerPC 603e CPU, 16MB operating room 32MB of RAM, and a 640×480 gloss Liquid crystal display. For the OS, you could run Windows NT 3.51 (which supported PowerPC) or IBM AIX, a UNIX derivative. With a price starting at $12,399, however, few could afford such a beefy machine—and even fewer actually bought unmatched.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Mock up 16 (1982)

Look-alike away Wireles Shack

Imitative model retail price: $4,999 (about $12,335 nowadays) CPU: 6MHz Motorola 68000 and 4MHz Zilog Z-80A

Motorola prototypic introduced its 16/32-bit 68000 CPU way plump for in 1979, but it was geezerhood ahead the then-expensive but capable chip ready-made it into any desktop PCs. Ace of the eldest such machines was the funny TRS-80 Pattern 16, a derived function of the business-adjusted TRS-80 Model II serial, that came equipped with both the TRS-80 standard Z80 processor and a 6MHz 68000. Radio Hut positioned the Model 16 as a multiuser business machine that could run either TRSDOS-16 or Microsoft XENIX (Microsoft's version of UNIX). Thanks to the Z80, it was also backward-miscible with every last 8-bit Model II software system.

And your eyes aren't deceiving you: Yes, those are cardinal 8-inch double-sided floppy drives tucked into the Model 16's heavy case. The drives could store 1MB of data per phonograph recording—a very impressive number at a time when a typical IBM PC's disk drive could only write 160KB of data per side. This was a very powerful PC at the time of its release.

Polliwog ALPHAbook 1 (1995)

Image by Computer History Museum

Base model retail price: $13,950 (well-nig $21,797 now) CPU: 233MHz DEC Of import 21066-A

They said it could never beryllium done: To stuff a 233MHz December Important CPU, single of the fastest and to the highest degree powerful server/workstation processors in the world, into a laptop form divisor. Merely Tadpole Computers did clean that in 1995, resulting in the ALPHAbook 1, which was probably the domain's most powerful laptop at the time. (For comparison, Dell sold-out a high-end $2,499 laptop computer with a 75MHz Pentium in December 1995.)

Due to the baron-hungry nature of the Celestial latitude Alpha Central processing unit, this trailblazing PC's internal battery sole provided one hour of conductor run fourth dimension. To remedy this, Tadpole sold an nonobligatory 4-impound external battery pack (the laptop computer alone weighed 7.5 pounds) that not only added more minutes of power, merely also provided an well-to-do way to lift weights on the go. Parenthesis from short run time, the Of import CPU also successful ALPHAbook 1 insanely expensive; with a $13,950 base price, you can atomic number 4 sure that few of these machines actually made it into customers' hands. As a leave, it's quite the collectible today.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/414656/retro-tech-vintage-muscle-machines-that-pushed-the-limits.html

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