I was looking at the Apollo Archive <
https://jim.rees.org/apollo-archive/>
to find out more about this former player in the turbulent Unix
workstation market. They offered some powerful graphics hardware, with
their own proprietary 3D API, almost I think on a par with SGI in its
early days. Another distinguishing characteristic was the highly
integrated networking among different workstation nodes.
They were founded in 1980, and initially their hardware ran a proprietary
OS called “Aegis” (which they described as “object-oriented”, with its own
proprietary GUI), on their own CPU architecture (described as “bit- sliced”). (I think these were the products with 3-digit model numbers,
e.g. 460, 660.) Then within a few years they moved to Motorola 68020/68030 processors (and 4-digit model numbers, e.g. 3500, 4500). Also they started using the name “Domain” for their software stack; I think initially this just referred to the network system; then this became “Domain/OS” for the whole OS, which offered both BSD and AT&T Unix as “personalities” (my term, not theirs) on top of the core, in addition to the older Aegis
support. Later, I think, when Aegis was abandoned, the OS became “Domain/ IX”, which was a totally Unix-based system.
In 1988 or so, they introduced their first RISC-based machine, the Series 10000 “Personal Supercomputer”. This ran an architecture they called “PRISM”, and was fabulously expensive -- up to a 6-figure price tag. Their less-expensive “personal workstations” (with only a 5-figure price tag) were still using Motorola processors, while most of the other Unix
workstation vendors were already moving large parts of their product
ranges to RISC.
Looking at brochures from this date, I still cannot see any mention of X11 support -- looks like they were still sticking to their own proprietary
GUI, when most of their competitors were quick to adopt the new open
standard for this.
Then, at some point, they got acquired by HP, no doubt as a result of
their struggles to stay competitive in a fast-changing marketplace. In the above archives, in some update files grouped by year from 1991 onwards, I
see subdirectories labeled “a88k” and “m68k”. So it looks like, not only
were they still supporting (and therefore still selling?) machines based
on Motorola 68000-family processors, but they were now using Motorola’s 88000 RISC processor as well -- their fourth CPU architecture, by my
count.
Wasn’t PRISM good enough? Was it too expensive, maybe? From what I’ve heard, the 88000 family weren’t particularly wonderful performance-wise, which is why hardly anybody made use of them. So, after dragging their
feet over Unix and then X11 support, yet another in a series of
questionable strategic decisions from the company? Which is why, after a
few more years, it ceased to exist altogether.
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* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)