The AT&T UNIX PC is a

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

desktop computer originally developed by

Convergent Technologies Convergent Technologies was an American computer company formed by a small group of people who left Intel Corporation and Xerox PARC in 1979. Among the founders were CEO Allen Michels, VP Engineering Bob Garrow, head of marketing Kal Hubler, and ...

(later acquired by

Unisys Unisys Corporation is an American multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. It provides digital workplace solutions, cloud, applications, and infrastructure solutions, ...

), and marketed by

AT&T Information Systems AT&T Information Systems (ATTIS), originally known as American Bell, was the fully separate subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) which focused on computer technology ventures and telephone sales, and other unregulated busines ...

in the mid- to late-1980s. The system was codenamed "Safari 4" and is also known as the PC 7300, and often dubbed the "3B1". Despite the latter name, the system had little in common with AT&T's line of

3B series computers The 3B series computers are a line of minicomputers produced from the late 1970s by AT&T Computer Systems' Western Electric subsidiary for use with the company's UNIX operating system. The line primarily consists of the models 3B20, 3B5, 3B15, 3 ...

. The system was tailored for use as a productivity tool in office environments and as an electronic communication center.AT&T, Select Code 999-601-311IS, ''AT&T UNIX PC Owner's Manual'' (1986)

Hardware configuration

* 10 MHz

Motorola 68010 The Motorola MC68010 processor is a 16/32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1982 as the successor to the Motorola 68000. It fixes several small flaws in the 68000, and adds a few features. The 68010 is pin-compatible with the 68000 ...

(16-bit external bus, 32-bit internal) with custom, discrete MMU * Internal MFM

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magne ...

, originally 10 MB, later models with up to 67 MB * Internal 5-1/4" floppy drive * At least 512 KB RAM on main board (1 MB or 2 MB were also options), expandable up to an additional 2 MB via expansion cards * Monochrome green phosphor monitor * Internal 300/1200 bit/s

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such ...

serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. ...

* Centronics parallel port * 3 S4BUS expansion slots * 3 phone jacks

PC 7300

The initial PC 7300 model offered a modest 512 KB of memory and a small, low performance 10 MB hard drive. This model, although progressive in offering a Unix system for desktop office operation, was underpowered and produced considerable fan and drive bearing noise even when idling. The modern-looking "wedge" design by Mike Nuttall was innovative, and the machine gained notoriety appearing in numerous movies and TV shows as the token "computer".

AT&T 3B/1

An enhanced model, "3B/1", was introduced in October 1985 starting at . 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.

S/50

Convergent Technologies offered an S/50 which was a re-badged PC 7300.

Olivetti AT&T 3B1

British Olivetti released the "Olivetti AT&T 3B1 Computer" in Europe.

Operating system

The operating system is based on

Unix System V Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...

Release 2, with extensions from 4.1 and 4.2

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

, System V Release 3 and Convergent Technologies. The last release was 3.51.

Programming languages

* AT&T BASIC * dBase III * GNU C++ * LISP * LPI C * LPI COBOL * LPI DEBUG (debugger) * LPI Fortran * LPI Pascal * LPI

PL/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. I ...

Microsoft BASIC Microsoft BASIC is the foundation software product of the Microsoft company and evolved into a line of BASIC interpreters and compiler(s) adapted for many different microcomputers. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first ...

* RM/ COBOL * RM/ Fortran * SMC BASIC * SVS Fortran * SVS Pascal

Application software

* Business Graphics (produces chart graphics from 20/20 spreadsheet data) * dBASE III (DBM) *

Informix IBM Informix is a product family within IBM's Information Management division that is centered on several relational database management system (RDBMS) offerings. The Informix products were originally developed by Informix Corporation, whose ...

(DBM) * Oracle (DBM) * Paint Power (drawing package) *

Samna Samna was a competitor to WordStar and MultiMate in the DOS market for word processors in the 1980s. Based in large part on the look and feel of the Lanier enterprise word processing system's software, Samna was targeted at businesses who had use ...

/AT&T Write Power 2 (word processor/spreadsheet) * Samna Plus (word processor/spreadsheet) * SMART System (Office Suite) * Sound Presentations (presentation graphics)

Spreadsheet software

* 20/20 (Supercomp 20) * Microsoft Multiplan

Word processors

* AT&T Word Processor * Crystal Writer *

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other pla ...

* Samna Word * SMART Word Processor * WordMarc *

WordStar WordStar is a word processor application for microcomputers. It was published by MicroPro International and originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, and later written also for MS-DOS and other 16-bit PC OSes. Rob Barnaby was the so ...

2000

Games

* Chess * Klondike * Life * Mahjongg * Larn * Moria *

NetHack ''NetHack'' is an open source single-player roguelike video game, first released in 1987 and maintained by the NetHack DevTeam. The game is a fork of the 1982 game ''Hack'', itself inspired by the 1980 game ''Rogue''. The player takes the role as ...

* Pac-Man clone * Robots * Rocks (

Asteroids An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

clone) * Super-Rogue 9.0 *

Tetris ''Tetris'' (russian: link=no, Тетрис) is a puzzle video game created by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. It has been published by several companies for multiple platforms, most prominently during a dispute over the appro ...

clone

Utility

* EMACS * HoneyDanBer

UUCP UUCP is an acronym of 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. A command named is one of the pr ...

package *

KA9Q KA9Q, also called KA9Q NOS or simply NOS, was a popular early implementation of TCP/IP and associated protocols for amateur packet radio systems and smaller personal computers connected via serial lines. It was named after the amateur radio calls ...

(implements

SLIP Slip or SLIP may refer to: Science and technology Biology * Slip (fish), also known as Black Sole * Slip (horticulture), a small cutting of a plant as a specimen or for grafting * Muscle slip, a branching of a muscle, in anatomy Computing and ...

, built-in

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

telnet Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet contr ...

SMTP The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients ty ...

finger A finger is a limb of the body and a type of digit, an organ of manipulation and sensation found in the hands of most of the Tetrapods, so also with humans and other primates. Most land vertebrates have five fingers ( Pentadactyly). Chambers ...

which are otherwise not available without installing the Ethernet software) * Kermit * MGR window system * Pcomm (

ProComm Datastorm Technologies, Inc., was a computer software company that existed from 1986 until 1996. Bruce Barkelew and Thomas Smith founded the company to develop and publish ProComm, a general purpose communications program for personal computers. ...

clone) * SPICE/NUTMEG (circuit simulation tool) *

TeX Tex may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname * Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer Joseph Arrington Jr. Entertainment * ''Tex'', the Italian ...

* Various Shells: Bourne, C, and Korn

Expansion cards

The UNIX PC has three proprietary S4BUS slots for expansion cards: * DOS-73

8086 The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and June 8, 1978, when it was released. The Intel 8088, released July 1, 1979, is a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allowi ...

co-processor A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU). Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating-point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, cryptography ...

card running at 8 MHz, Hercules graphics-compatible, with 512 KB RAM, an RS-232 COM2 port and optional

8087 The Intel 8087, announced in 1980, was the first x87 floating-point coprocessor for the 8086 line of microprocessors. The purpose of the 8087 was to speed up computations for floating-point arithmetic, such as addition, subtraction, multi ...

math co-processor. Mouse, floppy, modem (on COM1), and printer are shared in a DOS session.

MS-DOS 3.1 MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

was included. This board was designed and built for AT&T by Alloy Computer Products of Framingham, MA. * RAM could be added using 512 KB RAM or 2 MB RAM cards, up to a maximum of 4 MB (2 MB on the motherboard and 2 MB on expansion cards). * EIA/RAM combo cards contained extra RAM (512 KB, 1 MB, or 1.5 MB) and two

serial ports. * Dual EIA port card (same card as the EIA/RAM but without the RAM sockets) *

StarLAN StarLAN was the first IEEE 802.3 standard for Ethernet over twisted pair wiring. It was standardized by the standards association of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as 802.3e in 1986, as the 1BASE5 version of Ethernet. ...

1 Mbit/s (1BASE5) network over twisted-pair wire

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...

typically used in ''star'' format *

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

10 Mbit/s LAN card ( AMD Lance-based) using AUI connector and

Wollongong Wollongong ( ), colloquially referred to as The Gong, is a city located in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia. The name is believed to originate from the Dharawal language, meaning either 'five islands/clouds', 'ground near wa ...

TCP/IP stack/drivers * AUDIX Voice Power (“Speech Processor”) card allowed for the capture and digital recording of voice conversations. This was an option of the "Integrated Solution" package for the AT&T System 25 PBX where the UNIX PC served as the "Master Controller". * PC/PBX Connection Package 4 for AT&T PBX System 75 or System 85 * Floppy Tape card provided interface for 23 MB MFM Tape Cartridge Drive (e.g. Cipher FloppyTape 525) * QIC-02 card for tape backup * Expansion chassis card was hard-wired to the externally-powered Expansion Unit with five additional S4BUS slots (manufactured by Alloy Computer Products) * Piiceon Model SR-2048 (2 MB) RAM expansion card

Public domain software

''The STORE!'' was a

public domain software Public-domain software is software that has been placed in the public domain, in other words, software for which there is absolutely no ownership such as copyright, trademark, or patent. Software in the public domain can be modified, distributed, ...

repository provided by AT&T and accessible via dialup UUCP.

Emulation

The FreeBee emulator is available at .

Cancelled Successor

Three prototypes of a follow-on "P6" model were alleged to have been built with the specifications claimed to be: *

Motorola 68020 The Motorola 68020 ("''sixty-eight-oh-twenty''", "''sixty-eight-oh-two-oh''" or "''six-eight-oh-two-oh''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. A lower-cost version was also made available, known as the 68EC020. In keeping ...

* Optional Motorola 68881 FPU * SIMM sockets for up to 16 MB RAM * Color monitor * 2400 baud modem * 60 MB QIC tape

References

External links

AT&T Leapfrogs IBM With the Unix PC.

InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (abbreviated IW) is an information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a web-only publication. Its parent company today is International Data Group, and its siste ...

, April 15, 1985, pp. 15–17
The AT&T Unix PC
article from BYTE magazine Volume 10 Number 05: Multiprocessing (May 1985), pp. 98–106
The AT&T Unix PC Review
article from BYTE magazine Volume 11 Number 05: Multiprocessing (May 1986), pp. 254–262
comp.sys.3b1 FAQ

AT&T 3B1/7300 (UNIX PC) Information

AT&T UNIX PC at old-computers.com
* http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/att/3b1/ * http://www.unixpc.org {{DEFAULTSORT:ATandT Unix PC Computer-related introductions in 1985 UNIX PC Computer workstations 68k-based computers 32-bit computers Articles containing video clips