Talk:Corvus Systems
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[edit] Concept and Sun-1
This isn't to beat up on either Corvus or Sun, but I thought it'd be interesting to compare the two systems. There were a lot of 68K based workstations springing up around then, so who knows? Maybe the right push at the right time could've gotten Corvus a bigger foothold.
It looks like the main differences are that the Concept was significantly less expensive, but had less expansion capabilities. Lack of UNIX at the time of its release would be another limiter, which is why I'd be very interested in knowing when a UNIX release was made available, and what that release was.
But the biggest difference is arguably graphics. The Sun-1 had over twice the display real estate and a larger monitor. The Concept's rotating display is extremely cool (the screen I'm using right now is a Samsung WSXGA+ monitor that I bought in part because it has that functionality; pity Windows doesn't handle the rotation just a bit more cleanly), but seems to have been designed for text-processing rather than raster operations. I suspect the Sun's underlying hardware raster op support would have given it a significant performance advantage as well.
| Corvus Concept | Sun-1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Launched | April 1982 | May 1982 |
| Processor | Motorola 68000 @ 8 MHz | Motorola 68000 @ 10 MHz |
| Memory | 256K expandable to 512K | 256K expandable to 1.25 MB |
| Display | 15" 707 x 479 monochrome; can be rotated to portrait or landscape | 17" 1024 x 800 monochrome; optional 13" or 19" 640x480x8 color |
| Storage | optional 256K 8" floppy, optional 6 to 40 MB hard disk, VHS backup | up to four optional 84 MB hard disks |
| OS | CCOS (pseudo-multitasking, up to ten nested processes) | Version 7 Unix |
| Expansion | Four Apple II compatible slots | Three Multibus slots |
| Price | US$4995 | US$8900 ? |
--NapoliRoma (talk) 22:39, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
""Corvus took the basic Concept hardware and added a SUN-style MMU to the memory board and tried to sell it with Unisoft Unix as a first try at a Unix computer. This machine didn't have a bitmapped display."69.125.110.223 (talk) 16:18, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
-
- Interesting. So this was apparently something they OEM'ed to Valid Logic Systems, which sold it as the SCALDstation.--NapoliRoma (talk) 02:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
