DECstation: Encyclopedia II - DECstation - Second DECstation line

DECstation - Second DECstation line

The second line of DECstations began with the DECstation 2100 and 3100, released in 1989, which were the first commercially available RISC-based machines built by DEC. At the time DEC was mostly known for their CISC systems including the successful PDP and VAX lines. The DECstation 3100 was claimed to be the world's fastest UNIX workstation at the time. When it was introduced it was about three times as fast as the VAXstation 3100 which was introduced at about the same time. In contrast to the VAX (and the later DEC Alpha architecture), no version of the VMS operating system was ever released for DECstations. Server configurations of DECstation models, distributed without a framebuffer, were called "DECsystem" but should not be confused with some PDP-10 machines of the same name.

The MIPS-based DECstations were used as the first target system and development platform for the Mach microkernel, as well as early development of the Windows NT operating system. Shortly prior to the release of the DEC Alpha systems, a port of OSF/1 to the DECstation was completed, but it was not commercially released. More recently, various free operating systems such as NetBSD and Linux/MIPS have been ported to the MIPS-based DECstations, extending their useful life by providing a modern operating system.

The first generation of commercially marketed DEC Alpha systems, the AlphaStation series, were very similar to contemporaneous MIPS-based DECstations, which were sold alongside the Alpha systems as the DECstation line was gradually phased out. Both used the TurboChannel expansion bus for video and network cards, as well as being sold with the same mice, monitors, and keyboards.

Various DECstation models (which used a MIPS CPU) are emulated by the GXemul software project.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Second DECstation line", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki