AT&T Unix PC 7300 Model 3B1: A very cool Motorola 68010 powered workstation from 1985

[@dnwheeler]

The biggest improvement in the 68010 (vs. the 68000) was the ability to recover from a bus fault, allowing for virtual memory. This still required a separate MMU, but virtual memory and memory protection was required for multiuser Unix.

[@francoisrevol7926]

Yes, that includes standardizing the exception stack frame formats (which breake compatibility at the supervisor level), and making sure to push enough informations on the stack so that all instructions could be restarted after a fault.

[@jpdornberger]

Fascinating video! I was a Technical Consultant (System Engineer) ay AT&T in the mid-80s. i wrote and customized C-shell code for these Unix PCs (7300) and 3B2 minis. The Unix PC 7300 was developed by Convergent Technologies for AT&T.

[@rancidbeef582]

BTW, those came with a built-in 1200 baud modem. I used to use the UUCP package on mine to call my employer's server once an hour to check and / or send email. I once downloaded the source code for the GNU C compiler -- then around 5 MB in size. It took it TWELVE HOURS to download.

[@Spender604]

Old UNIX stuff is endlessly fascinating.

[@mojoblues66]

Yet expect Adriam to spent most of the time with that shit ass PC emulation card that nobody cares about in a UNIX workstation from 1985 that is an important milestone in the history of System V

[@MrDustpile]

Timeless design of the books. Looks like they could be out today.

[@IkarusKommt]

@@MrDustpileYou mean the ugly monospaced Courier font?

[@garthhowe297]

From a time when you got real manuals, and they weren't afraid of you opening the case.

[@rartolak]

I hate manuals these days just show that... this is a light, a dial, some buttons w/ a similarly trying to be helpful message

[@fluffycritter]

@@CandyGramForMongo_ But even without that context, a lot of computers had that sort of reference material available. For example, the C64 programmer's reference guide had full schematics for the system, and pretty comprehensive block diagrams for the custom ICs.

[@IkarusKommt]

Because the computers were so primitive back then, so an average user won't be able to screw anything inside just by looking at it.

[@Doug_in_NC]

I used to run simulations on an IBM workstation back in the early 90’s and it came with about 2’ thick of documentation, and incredible as it sounds today, IBM would send me a box full of Unix updates on tape (not audio tapes!) every 3 months.

[@bazza5699]

and they came with coding guides too so you could learn to program.. i miss those days

[@mikejetzer4155]

Very cool! Brings back memories. My first Unix machine (1990) was a 3B1 ... I eventually wound up with two of them, although one might have only been a PC7300 (the 3B1s were a later rev, with a full meg of RAM and the 67 meg hard drive, while the earlier ones with 512K and the smaller hard drives were generally called PC7300s). I never really ran with the graphical interface, because it was cumbersome ... there's a way to run full-screen (basically like a terminal). I picked up a pair of serial port expansion cards which also had memory on them. I forget if they added 512K or a full meg. Put them both in my main 3B1. Also picked up a pair of StarLan cards. StarLan was an early twisted-pair Ethernet-like network; I think it ran at 1 Mbps. But the software that came with it wasn't that great and didn't include standard TCP/IP things like telnet and FTP, but instead had some sort of other ("TLS"???) networking tools. The 3B1 has a built-in 1200 baud modem. I soon bought a 2400 baud external modem. My //e had a 1200 baud modem card, so I hooked the two modem ports up and had someone call me (so that the modem on the 3B1 saw the ring; the modem's not Hayes compatible and I couldn't figure out how to get it to answer with the phone). Once the modems synched up, I disconnected the phone from the wiring and they stayed connected for weeks. Later I wrote a C program that detected the ring signal, so I could see when someone called me but didn't leave a message on my answering machine (cassette-based, of course). Somewhere along the line, the hard disk died and I bought a 67MB, full-height hard drive off of Usenet, used, for $300 (and I got a good deal!). Luckily, I had the whole set of install disks (I forget if I had version 3.5 or 3.51 ... I know it was a "big deal" amongst 3B1ers to have the last version put out by AT&T). Had the full set (or nearly so) of manuals, too. Sadly, I scrapped them both in 1996 when my wife convinced me that it was more important to have room for our soon-to-be first child in the spare bedroom than it was it have my 3B1s (and Apple ///s -- I tossed two of them then, too). In retrospect, I don't know if I made the correct decision back then :-)

[@alanbellwood3902]

Clip on KB was to allow the cleaning staff to wipe the desks down without touching that crazy expensive workstation. Also helped when moving the kit from desk to desk. Some other Terminals not AT&T also had a lockable keyboard garage/Cover and ability to mount the entire thing to the desk for public use in library's and public buildings.

[@gallowsgryph]

I kept getting confused when you put the keyboard onto its storage like it belonged there while it was running. Then I saw the lack of room on the desk/table, and it made more sense. Definitely looking forward to a deep dive video on this machine.

[@Gadgetman1989]

You missed a chance to use the jurassic park clip of "it's a unix system" lol great video Adrian

[@simontay4851]

Yes, i thought of that scene from the jurasic park film. I wonder if the unix system in the film was also version 5.

[@minty_Joe]

"I know this..."

[@michaelburns8073]

​@@simontay4851 Yeah, it kinda was. The Jurassic Park film used an Silicon Graphics workstation, and it was running System V with BSD extensions. By the way, some folks may not know this, but the visual file system that was used in the movie was a real thing (mostly used as a demo) and not just made up for the movie. I remember watching the movie, yelling that it would be a hell of a lot faster to use the command line!

[@Andrath]

@@michaelburns8073 SGI machines ran IRIX. Which was a SystemV derivative, but certainly different. Also, SGI machines ran on MIPS processors. The 3D filesystem thing was an OpenGL demo app which was part of the Magic Desktop, which was based on the X windowing system.

[@mojoblues66]

Since the actual quote is "It's a UNIX system. I know this!" it is pretty realistic, assuming that Adrian has no clue about UNIX.

[@OzRetrocomp]

You know it's going to be a very special MMMC when That '70s Towel makes it into the thumbnail!

[@chickenwarriorr]

@@danielktdoran That towel is an archive of memories

[@chickenwarriorr]

@@danielktdoran I'm just surprised it's not sentient by the way it looks

[@OzRetrocomp]

@@danielktdoran Maybe a German viewer could send Adrian a 1980s Siemens PC?

[@TedKekatos]

I had one of those 7300 PC on my desk when I worked at AT&T in 1985.

[@timothyp8947]

Thanks Adrian and the person who sent you the workstation. I find it fascinating looking at old workstations, especially those that were more unusual away from the dominance of Sun in that era. Early workstations certainly seemed to come in all shapes and sizes! Worked on a project with one ICL PERQ in a sea of Suns, which at the time seemed very unusual with its portrait screen.

[@k9taxi]

This brings back good memories of the past. I learned programming on the Motorola 68000 series. They were awesome!

[@BilisNegra]

I'm beginning to wonder when is Adrian going to run out of storage space watching the size of several of the well-deserved donations he's getting in the latest months. Other than that, wow that was rare (especially to European eyes) and fascinating, and I'm looking forward to the follow-up episode on this machine!

[@CubicleNate]

I have not a single guess... This will be fun! I love these old workstations!

[@NorthWay_no]

The 68010 added a number of fixes and features over the plain 68000. It has a minimal instruction cache (which might be more like an opcode prefetcher that avoids fetching the same memory over and over again), it properly virtualizes system state (i.e. changes to the SR register handling), it lets you move the exception vectors away from $00000000, it supports the (then) new external MMU for virtual memory use and in conjunction with that it also properly supports restartable instructions (and thus it also has an extended stack frame).

[@GeoffSeeley]

Having used AT&T Unix before and it was at @5:58 I realized we needed all of those manuals back in the day because there was no internet to reference. Now I realized were I get my love of printed references from :-)

[@larrywilliams8010]

I used to have one of those PC-7300s. Its hard drive also died and I had no suitable replacement, so it had a 67MB full-size drive hanging off the back. And those manuals were awesome, if as heavy as the computer itself. I love how that PC looks.

[@isaacforster6242]

Any update on this? I'd love to see this thing in all of it's glory.

[@admirerofclassicalelectron2858]

This beauty from the eightys is really impressive. Its condition and completeness are incredible. It reminds me to the contemporary IBM machines - the real ones, not the PCs. I'm looking foreward for the next episodes.

[@tinfoilcat]

Fancy! I guessed Sun/2., they also used the 68010. The first models launched in 1983 and I think they were replaced around 1986. Crazy expensive, but the AT/T might have been a bit cheaper since the Suns have more advanced graphics and used SMD or SCSI hard drives.

[@tomstdenis]

19:45 Dave Dunfield lives just outside Ottawa Ontario Canada and in the 1990s he was my high school co-op supervisor. He's the author of MICRO-C and related 8/16-bit development tools for a slew of micro controllers/pcs that for a short spell in the 90s were actually pretty in demand. Eventually GUI based IDE platforms based on Windows largely took over in the early 2000s though and he seemed to shift focus to contracting work instead. I lost touch with him after high school but he's still alive and kicking it.

[@rigglestad8479]

Please digitize all those manuals if they haven't been already, and image those disks. This is so freakin' cool.

[@murraypearson2359]

I knew the man who designed one of the fastest supercomputers in the world in 1986. Called the Myrias, it was the first massively multiprocessing machines, and used 1,024 Motorola 68010s. Colin said it "ran circles around Crays."

[@apx5777]

Great😀 I miss the good old days when manufacturers produced proper instruction manuals like you have there.

[@Charlesb88]

Here is a summery of some of the most importantly moments in the history of Unix and AT&T’s brief foray into the computer hardware business: 1970 - AT&T created Unix as OS for use internally on the AT&T phone network and among AT&T decisions. They were procluded from selling Unix as a commercial venture at the time due to a prior antitrust lawsuit from the late 1950’s where they had agreed not to enter into any business not directly phone service related such as the computer business (they where at the time a government sanctioned monopoly in the local and long distance phone service). They where however able to legally license the source code to Unix to other companies. At first the developers of Unix passed around complies of Unix under the table to various universities to experiment with but later in the 70’s the started to license the source code with a lower price for education institutions and a higher price for corporations to obtain a license. One University that licensed the code was UC Berkeley which created the Berkeley Systems Distribution (BSD) version of Unix, from which several commercial versions of Unix where derived from such as from HP, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. BSD took AT&T’s Unix code and added various networking additions and other utilities to make a more complete OS. BSD Unix was one of the first OS’s to include TCP/IP networking support for use on the then new Internet which was starting to replace the older Arpnet, * Early 80’s - The U.S. government sued AT&T again over anti-trust issue and while the initially fought the case in court, eventually defeating a loss they decide to enter into a settlement where they would agree to divest themselves of the local phone companies and allow competition in the long distance phone service, They would in turn be allowed to enter other business, especially the computer business. This led them to them creating Unix System V, the first fully commercialized release of Unix from AT&T. This competed with BSD and it’s commercial derivatives in what became known as the Unix Wars (The licensing terms for BSD allowed it to continue to exist even after AT&T was releasing it’s own official version of Unix and in fact both System V and BSD shared some code back and forth between each other). * Mid 80’s - compatibility issues between BSD and System V Unix (and derivatives led to standardization efforts such as the Posix standard and eventually anyone wishing to call their OS Unix had to meet certain standards to ensure comparability in certain key areas across different platforms. * Late-80’s - Certain users of BSD Unix complained about the height cost of a Unix license needed from AT&T to use BSD legally. They urged UC Berkeley’s Berkeley Systems to create a version of Unix without any proprietary code from AT&T that wouldn’t’ require extensive licensing fees. What came of this initially was incomplete OS that did not include any proprietary code from AT&T. Others then created a kernel and other bit of code need to make it into a complete Unix-like OS. This is where Free BSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD came from. Next’s NeXTSTEP/OpenStep OS was OS was based on BSD and later Free BSD and eventually became Mac OS X after Apple bought Next. * Late 80’s - AT&T decided to enter the computer hardware business and starts selling DOS PC’s and Unix workstations. Some four years later they realize they are not going to successfully compete against the likes of HP, Dell, Compaq, etc. and exit the hardware business. They also decide around the same time sell the rights to Unix (including System V) after not being able to properly fully commercialize Unix either. Eventually, AT&T as it was then was bought up by Pacific Bell their former local phone service provider and then PacBell change it’s name back to AT&T thus in a sense reversing the splitting up of AT&T. Prior to and just after AT&T sold off it’s Unix devision, a bunch of lawsuits where filled by AT&T and SCO (which bought the Unix devision) over copyright issues related BSD-based Unix/Unix-like OS all of which failed eventually and currently no Unix-like OS still being developed includes any code from the original AT&T Unix. Thus they are really more clones of Unix with only indirect connections to the original AT&T Unix. * early 90’s - Meanwhile in Norway, Linus Torvalds was playing around with a Unix-like OS at his University called Minux. When he was unable to license Minux for his own use (It wasn’t fully open-source at time), he decided to create his own Unix-like (aka *nix) OS which would become Linux. At first all he had was the Linux Kernel, but he got together with the Free Software foundation that was created their own HURD OS (another *nix OS) but was stuck trying to create the HURD kernel, due to their decision to adopt an extremely complicated kernel design fro HURD (It’s still being worked on to this day and may never see the light of day). The Linux Kernel combined with FSF’s Unix-like utilities allowed for a command-line only *nix OS. From their others added GUI’s to make Linux into a modern GUIO-based OS, spawning countless Linux distributions. * Late 90’s - BSD and most commercial Unix variants from HP and Sun all faded way in favor of enterprise Linux distros. BSD-base open source variants like Free-BSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and such continue to exist with MacOS being the only commercial BSD-based OS still being sold (it’s free-BSD based core though is available as the open source Darwin minus the GUI parts that make it MacOS).

[@threepotMR2]

The Scoobie-Doo towel - Looks like the mystery machine to me. Adrian's always receiving Scooby snacks, the fans love him so much they are trying to give him a hyperglyca'!

[@ocprime]

Schematics are in the end of the UNIX PC Reference Manual, I've spent a lot of time looking at them helping out on the FreeBee (3b1) emulator! Many manuals have been digitized already and are available on bitsavers (/pdf/att/3b1/)

[@ScarletSwordfish]

I am really looking forward to seeing more of this unique machine!

[@ctrlaltrees]

I think I'm even more excited about those manuals than I am about the machine itself - they're lovely!

[@nielsroetert]

One of the most intriguing machines I've seen on any channel lately, must be my UNIX background, can't wait for future episodes on this bad boy.

[@VicTheVicar]

I got a bit worried that it wouldn't be a video this Wednesday! Thanks for posting it, Adrian! Also, a belated congratulations on 100k!

[@orionfl79]

Fascinating! Back in the late 90's when I worked as a computer tech I came across a similar machine (3B2 if I remember right), but it didn't have any of the manuals or software... And at the time we couldn't find anything online about it other then a few product pages mentioning that it was a Unix PC. Very cool! :D

[@johnboynb]

I LOVE old school UNIX!

[@kfellens]

I had one of those back when. Bought it at a surplus sale, they didn't sell very well when originally made. Real AT&T Unix System V. Used it to connect to its big brother, the 3B15 super mini up at the university to access Usenet.

[@rawr51919]

What helps is that Usenet is STILL AROUND even today, pretty sure it always was a subscription service

[@kfellens]

@@rawr51919 Usenet was on the pre-commercialized Internet, before Mosaic, it was free if you had a govt or university connection.

[@rawr51919]

@@kfellens certainly helped if you needed important file backup storage, Usenet was there for that!

[@ObiWanBillKenobi]

That towel is so 1970s I feel like I could turn on any episode of “All in the Family” and see it.

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

the 68010 has a few bytes of instruction cache built in if I recall correctly.

[@chriswareham]

That machine and it's manuals are one hell of a donation - a real Unix workstation from the people who invented it. I think some early Sun workstations may have used the 68010, and they ran the other main strand of Unix bring BSD based rather than using AT&T's System V.

[@ocprime]

The UNIX PC was actually developed by Convergent Technologies (and sold by AT&T) but I agree awesome to have “real” UNIX!

[@robintst]

Looking forward to more on this workstation, can't wait to see the insides.

[@michaelditto]

AT&T contracted to Convergent Technologies to design this machine. CT internally called it the S4. The schematics are in the CT version of the service manual. I have a hard copy (not conveniently accessible) if you need it.

[@MeanGeneHacks]

haha love it! I remember using a 68010 in my Amiga 500 as a cheap accelerator, since it was pin compatible with the MC68K!

[@djdublo]

What a fascinating machine, Unix and DOS, windowed. It's like the future!

[@andrewdunbar828]

When are the '70s towel t-shirts coming?

[@gregclare]

Watched through waiting for you to open her up so we see the beauty of the 68010 mainboard and the other nostalgic Motorloa CPU internals. But then the video ended. Oh well.

[@MartinPaoloni]

Fascinating machine. Never seen something like it. Can't wait to see you further tinkering with it!

[@VorpalGun]

I love old Unix systems. Look forward to seeing more about this.

[@MichaelEhling]

My grandparents had a set of towels exactly like the 70's Towel. I seem to recall they had another set with the same pattern but cream and rose.

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Oh that would be cool to see! Like a long lost sister to this one!

[@belzebub16]

Very excited to see the rest of the machine!

[@MichiganPeatMoss]

I worked in a college computer lab in '89 and loved those IBM terminal keyboards!

[@frankowalker4662]

Nice looking workstation, I esp like the keyboard. Can't wait to see more of it.

[@Eich226]

We had these in the lab at Bradley University in 1985

[@baremetaltechtv]

11 months later and we still don't have an update on this computer! I'm dying to know what's going on with it

[@jonmarler]

Wow! Such an iconic machine. What a treasure to own one and the tools to restore it. I'm very much looking forward to seeing more of this restoration project.

[@tuppyglossop222]

About that time I started in a job where I had a Sun Microsystems workstation running AutoCAD. My previous job had an IBM PC. Just the one for an entire floor of engineers. You had to book time on it and there was little opportunity to learn how it worked. So I used to do my calculations by hand or take them home and run them on my Commodore 64. (The sizing of the main pump motors cooling system pipework for Brooklyn Pumping Station, the second largest Sewage pumping station in Melbourne, Australia) was programmed on the 64. A listing of the program was included in the pumping station documentation.) It was a bit of a step up from the 64 to the Sun, but I had many wonderful hours learning about UNIX. I do wonder though how the Sun would stack up to my 8GB Raspberry Pi 4. My next job was with PCs, a real shock to the system. Text based DOS after a fully graphical OS. It was a fun time, with things changing so fast. Always something new to learn.

[@peterasq]

Around then I was testing Teleprinters various companies wanted to have approved for use in Australia, or were tendering for use Telecom Australia. In many cases they were PCs just specialised as telex machines. I don't know whether I ever saw this, but it certainly brings back memories.

[@stevem.1853]

If you ever think about merch, I think you should do a mouse pad or something similar with the pattern of your lovely 70's bath towel!

[@mikaelmrup3196]

Early UNIX systems are SOOOOOO cool. I am looking forward to see you getting this jewel operational.

[@robertlinder6414]

Finally a PC that I used to have

[@sampoturunen9337]

Adrian cliffhanger basement 😁

[@pe25]

Wow, your channel is pretty much a time warp portal. I am back in my teenage years and feeling goofy all over again! 😃👍🏾

[@exidy-yt]

Excellent vid, always happy to find another good retro computer reviewer, this workstation is in excellent shape, and big props for going into the user manual. Having DOS emulation in hardware was an amazing bonus at that time, and could cost almost as much as a separate PC/XT alone, so very cool that it is included! I would give my left nut for this machine. If all your videos are this interesting, Consider me subbed! (also to answer your question about the 68010, there was a Tandy (Radio Shack) machine that used a 68010 though I cannot remember the model number, and I believe there were a couple of machines in Japan that used it as well, but nothing 'mainstream' used it, most Motorola-based PCs jumped from the 68000 right to the 68020 or 030 like Macs and Amigas as I recall.)

[@pauldunecat]

I still have mine! Though I haven't turned it on since the early 90's. I doubt the ST4096 drive still works as it was loud and would run so hot. I ran SysVr3.5.1.4 on it. The built in 1200baud modem would dial up to get email for me using the old host!host!username email address with HDB UUCP. Good times!

[@steeeefano]

Can't wait for the second episode!

[@jonathancombe9991]

Never heard of it but looks like quite a technically advanced machine for the time. DOS running in a window sounds especially interesting.

[@parrottm76262]

Totally jealous. Love all things Unix from that era. My shop was all Sun. The AT&T stuff was more expensive for what it was. Would love to get my hands on one of these.

[@lindoran]

The installation media is a treasure trove really interested in a version of DOS which uses a serial port for graphic output.

[@TheDecguy]

I still have one of these unopened, new in the box! Someday I’m going to look inside.

[@sarcasmasaservice]

I wish computers still came with manuals like these!

[@yorgle]

Sweet! One of my good friends had a 3B1 when we were sharing a house back in the 90s. We mainly used it as the place we all played Nethack, without needing to dialup anywhere. It took 27 hours to compile on it. Not the fastest of machines, but I loved the keyboard on it... ;) Shortly after that I had a Sun Ultra 10 on my desk at work, and it took about 4 minutes to compile the same source code. :D

[@minty_Joe]

Ah, AT&T UNIX. What an OS! 'clear', 'pwd', 'ps -eafg' and 'kill -9' were used religiously. The BSD UNIX is a port of AT&T UNIX, but custom designed for use on the west coast. BSD is currently in the heart of macOS and Mac OS X.

[@XanderCDN]

I just got one of these and found your KZbin video! I think I've seen you before at a local Commodore user group meeting a while back!

[@casaderobison2718]

Had I not read the title of the video and had to guess what was under the towel, I would have guessed a sewing machine based on the shape. :)

[@joegee2815]

Sun workstations used the 68010, then moved to the 68030 and 68040 before switching to the Sun designed SPARC RISC processor. I think that some of the other workstations used Motorola as well, like Apollo?

[@TomStorey96]

68010 fixes some "privilege violations" that allow user programs to read some bits of the status register that should only really be accessible in supervisor mode. I think it also introduced the Vector Base Register which allows the exception vector table to be located anywhere other than address 0. And a couple of other things that I don't remember right now.

[@ickipoo]

The 68000 did not fully save the CPU state to the stack when taking a memory exception, which prevented you resuming execution after an exception, so it was only possible to implement virtual memory schemes via heroic and expensive hardware hacks. The 68010 fixed this, at the cost of an incompatible and larger stack frame. This was only relevant on operating systems with virtual memory - the 68000 was fine otherwise (and cheaper) - there were no significant speed differences.

[@TomStorey96]

@@ickipoo that's the one! Still a great CPU as you say, and some very successful computing platforms were built using the 68000 - Amiga and Mac come to mind.

[@TomStorey96]

Another user commented (but I've lost the post now) that the 68010 had a very small instruction cache, enough for a simple loop to be executed without needing to fetch from memory.

[@antoniomeloni8174]

Very interesting machine, waiting for your “in-depth” video of it! 👍

[@Wizardofgosz]

I always wanted one of these. I wish this machine had caught on back in the day.

[@talideon]

The 68010 was an interesting chip. It wasn't very popular at the time, partly because it was mostly a bugfixed 68000 that ran only ~10% faster. The main _interesting_ change was the MOVE from SR instruction being made privileged, which means that safely and efficiently do virtualisation with it. There were some other changes that caused compatibility issues, but most of those were to fix design issues with the original 68000.

[@stevenwilson1690]

Actually - the 68010 was the First Motorola Processor that supported Virtual Memory operations. If you pull the Bus Error signal - it will dump internal state to the stack and allow the instruction to be restarted. You can put an external MMU in the way and create a real VM system with it. That was the PRIMARY feature of the 68010 over the 68K. I designed a Unix box around it back in 1982.

[@talideon]

@@stevenwilson1690 It was, but that was basically a consequence of the fixes I mentioned. However, it was unpopular due to the overhead imposed by the MMU built to pair with it.

[@chainq68k]

I'm a simple man, I see Motorola 68k content, I upvote.

[@DavidHembrow]

The important difference between 68000 and 68010 is that the latter supports virtual memory. It was possible to build a 68000 system with VM but you needed two processors, one running slightly ahead of the other so that the first would trap on non existent memory and the second could take over to do the swapping without losing any state. Obviously this required buying two processors to achieve the performance of just one, increased complexity and cost etc. So the 68010 made machines with VM much cheaper.

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

What other systems of the era used Dual 68000s? Atari had the Gaza running in 1983 with Dual 68000s but parent company Warner told them they would not be entering the workstation market and thus it wasn't released.

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

It's interesting that the DOS card can sport an 8087 but the Wikipedia entry doesn't mention anything about whether or not the AT&T itself supporting a 68881. There's an expansion chassis to add 5 more expansion slots to it so the memory can be expanded to the max, plus Ethernet and other options.

[@Hiraghm]

the DMA of the 68000 was extremely underestimated. It allowed some incredible things on the Amiga.

[@TomStorey96]

68000 doesn't have DMA built in, it has to be provided by an external peripheral or DMA controller. But it is a very powerful tool no matter the system!

[@osgeld]

I have a soft spot for the AT&T machines, I used a xt clone for years (rebranded Olivetti) and every square inch of it was heavy duty class, then I got one of the slightly later than that machine unix workstations and even though it was old by then it was a badass

[@jwvdvuurst]

for your information: multiuser in Unix terminology means that you can have multiple user accounts on your machine, which can run alongside each other.

[@CygnusTM]

Ah ha! Finally the mystery item under the 70s towel!

[@iz8dwf]

Nice one... I've had my first encounter with Sys V Unix on the Olivetti LSX-3005 which is very similar to the little AT&T Unix PC. I still have lots of the old software disks. I think I have also part of the manuals. Of course a real Olivetti LSX-30xx would be impossible to find anymore.

[@geoffpool7476]

Nice UNIX System. 3B1 was designed for the business/executive professional. I think it uses Sys V V2 or V3. Looking forward to more videos on this system.

[@stooartbabay]

Had a chuckle at the "Beg" button on the num pad. :)

[@orbitalgolem91]

I'm having a Voodoo Donuts flashback from my visit to Portland with that shirt Adrian. Loved that place!

[@jasongrimes9305]

In 1987 I had the opportunity to use a Sun 2 system that used a 68010 running SunOS. The 68010 allowed the use of a MMU so Unix could have memory protection. The 68000 did not have that option so Unix was not able to run on them. I always read the manual first too. :)

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

If the 68000 didn't have the ability to use MMUs, then how come the Amiga and Atari ST both sport MMUs?

[@jasongrimes9305]

@@TheJeremyHolloway Amiga OS didn't support memory protection, although they could have once the Amiga started using the 68020s. I'm not familiar with GEM OS to say what Atari was doing, but if they used a 68000, then no memory protection.

[@darkwinter6028]

Kinda reminds me a little bit of the way that the keyboard slid under the overhanging display & drive bays on the Apple Lisa.

[@grumble2009]

I had one of these in my lab in grad school ('94) that I used as a terminal to a headless HP 9000/300 machine. No Ethernet, but I got UUCP working ok over RS-232. The machine had a '286 coprocessor card installed and someone installed WordPerfect on it.

[@scharkalvin]

68010 has a "virtual memory" feature. I think a separate MMU chip was required to make full use of this feature. Linux and Unix requires the MMU and virtual memory feature to create the required USER and KERNEL modes.

[@stevesether]

Yup. The seperate MMU chip was the Motorola 68451 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68451 . Looks like no Linux though. The 68010 must not support a programmable MMU. www.linux-m68k.org/faq/reqs.html

[@rog2224]

You don't often see a machine of that age with the shipping 'disk' included. We used to call them Headbangers back late 80s.

[@AndrewTubbiolo]

It's a UNIX PC!!!!!! I have a distro of Unix install disks for that. I think you need them. I played with one of these back in the 90's. The hardware was great, but there was a dearth of software to support it. I'll bet a small footprint 68000 Linux might work on it. .... Oh, you have the system software packet!

[@EdwinNoorlander]

Thanks. I like System V. It’s one of the systems I worked with.

[@InssiAjaton]

Quite interesting! I recall having drooled about one of these. However, it did not happen; I was not rich enough to justify the price. But many years later I bought another (used) computer built with 69010 processor. It was, funny enough, made by Motorola. Model VME/10. It came with a multi-user operating system called Versados. I played with it just enough to see it offered nothing of use for me, so I promptly changed over to using a version of FORTH. I still have the instruction books of the Versados as well as the VME/10 computer, but last time (in the late 1990's or early 2000's) it had apparently a bad capacitor or some other reason to let out a bit of its reservoir of valuable smoke.

[@JARVIS1187]

Started to watch the video and it seemed familiar. Checked below the video and saw the "thumbs up" in blue, so I can now be sure, I watched that video already :D

[@bbuggediffy]

That is just riveting.

[@octobyte9277]

Shameless plug: If you’re interested in the AT&T 6300 PC, I covered my unit in the very first episode of OctoByte! Great video as always Adrian! Always wanted to explore one of the AT&T Unix machines (and hope you don’t mind the plug).

[@Lee_Adamson_OCF]

68010 was to fix a bug/oversight of the 68000 that prevented the use of a PMMU, iirc. Was quickly replaced by 020.

[@VICTORYOVERNEPTUNE]

Awesome machine.