Brendan's Classic Apollo Domain-Series Computers

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Apollo DN 3500

The Apollo was a powerful workstation of the 80s. I was given a pair of these from my good friend, Robin (thank you!!!), with whom I worked at (IBM/Motorola) Somerset. She had used these in the design of Stardent machines, which, by an odd coincidence, I used at New Mexico State University during the MAPER (Multi-sensor Analysys Program for Environmental Restoration) project.

The DN 3500 has a Motorola 68k processor with, of all things, an ISA bus. This is odd because I know of no other machines which combined a Motorola-based processor with an Intel-PC oriented bus. I understand that there are several standard PC ISA cards that work with the Apollo (in other words, drivers exist for them), such as a Western Digital SCSI adapter and the 3COM EtherLink II (3c505). Most users of the Domain-series machines did not, however, use standard ethernet, they used the built-in token ring. In fact, Apollos running DomainOS were well known for their easily-configurable, reliable networking. Even Hewlett-Packard recognized this, for when they acquired Apollo, they kept the Apollo name on future workstations.





There is much more to discover and document about these cool machines, but I've not yet had time for more than the above...
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brendan@polylith.com