Magnolia Workstation

It wasn't long after RogerBates joined TekLabs that the Magnolia project got started. RickLefaivre? believed that we needed serious desktop computing power if we were to have any idea how to plan for what would surely be the environment of the future.

Roger and ChipSchnarel and others build about 60 of the dual processor 68000 machines. The second processor was a display processor which was helped with a little bit-slice engine well on its way around the CircleOfReincarnation.

Roger wrote the windowing software that ran on the display processor and knocked off a nice drafting program that talked to it from a unix process running on the other cpu. Many other projects were started but only AllenWirfsBrock's Smalltalk had any impact.

I'm not sure who picked the name Magnolia. I've heard it was MayerSchwartz? who had seen the previous workstation effort, code name Beaver, go down. In the south the Magnolia is also known as the Beaver Tree.

RandalSchwartz played with one of these while he was waiting for TekECS to get organized, learned the SmalltalkLanguage, then later convinced JasonPenney? at ServioLogic? that Smalltalk was the "right language". The rest is history.

CategoryHardware