Applix 1616

The Applix 1616 was a kit

.

History

Paul Berger and Andrew Morton formed the Australian company Applix

-based personal computer for sale in kit form.

The project was presented to Jon Fairall, then editor of the Australia and New Zealand electronics magazine Electronics Today International, and in December 1986, the first of four construction articles was published as "Project 1616", with the series concluding in June 1987. In October and November 1987, a disk controller card was also published as "Project 1617".

Over the next decade, about 400 1616s were sold.^[1]

Applix Pty. Ltd., was in no way related to the North American company of the same name that produced Applixware.

Hardware

Main board

The main board contains:

• a
  MHz
  .
• 512
  Dynamic RAM
• between 64
  kibibytes of ROM
• on board
  MGA and multisync monitors
  .
• dual RS-232 serial ports using a Zilog Z8530.
• a parallel port for Centronics-type printers or general purpose I/O. This was provided by a Rockwell 6522 Versatile Interface Adapter, which was also the source of timer interrupts.
• 4 channel analog/audio output via an 8 bit DAC and multiplexor.
• software audio/analogue input via the DAC and a comparator.
• a
  PC/XT
  keyboard interface.

The main board also had four 80-pin

), although the form-factor was different, which left the KCS cards sticking out of the top of the 1616 case.

Disk controller card

The disk controller card contains:

• A Zilog Z80 processor running at 8 MHz
• 32
  kibibytes of ROM
• 64
  static RAM
• a WD1772 floppy disk controller
• dual RS-232 serial ports using a Zilog Z8530
• An
  NCR5380 SCSI
  controller

The coprocessor is able to run

clone), or can act as a smart disk controller.

Memory expansion card

The memory card:

• accepts between 1 and 4
  Dynamic RAM
  in 1 megabyte increments,
• has an optional memory management unit implemented in fast static RAM and PALs,
• Another
  NCR5380 SCSI hard disk interface. This SCSI controller was mapped into the 68000's address space
  , and was considerably faster than the one on the Z80 coprocessor card.

34010 graphics coprocessor card

The

and arbitrary width arithmetic operations on pixel data.

User developed cards

• Graham Redwood developed an
  wire-wrap or Speedwire
  prototype?).
• Philip Hutchison developed a Motorola 68030 coprocessor card (small run of working double sided PCBs).
• Kevin Bertram developed a Transputer card, an
  provisional patent
  , but never released as a kit.)

Other one-off interface cards were developed for specific projects, including a numerically controlled sheet metal spinning machine controller, several EEPROM programmers, etc.

Operating systems

1616/OS

1616/OS was initially little more than a powerful monitor, with commands for dumping and modifying memory, loading and saving to tape, and a built in

to the 1616/OS was relatively painless.

Minix

Colin McCormack ported Minix to the 1616. He worked around the lack of a memory management unit when fork()ing by copying BSS, heap and stack of the child and parent processes before scheduling each one. The MMU on the RAM expansion card was developed to support Colin's Minix port, although it's unclear if it was ever used for this purpose.

ZRDOS

Conal Walsh ported the

-based disk controller card. When operating in this mode, the 68000 acted as a console for ZRDOS, although it was still possible to suspend the connection to ZRDOS, and run 1616 programs, provided they didn't need disk I/O.

MGR

Not strictly an operating system, the MGR windowing system run under 1616/OS, but usurped the console video and keyboard, and added virtual tty devices for each window. The MGR port required a video hack to add a higher resolution but monochrome video mode; this was done by replacing a PAL in the video circuit.

Applications

Most Unix and Minix programs were able to be ported to 1616/OS. Ports included:

roff, sc,^[3] sed, sort, split, STEVIE, strings, sum, tail, tar, tee, ularn, uniq, vi, wanderer,^[4] wc, xmodem, ymodem, zmodem, zoo

Several messaging or

Fidonet

gateways, and many utilities to allow safe shell-level dial-up access.

Several computer languages were supported, including:

• BASIC
  • Tiny BASIC
• C (HiTech C, and later gcc)
• Forth
• Lisp
• MUMPS
• 68000 assembly language

The collection of 1616/OS shareware eventually grew to thirty-one 800kB floppies. Included were innumerable small utilities and ported applications from other environments.

The 1616 users group

Applix

store in 1987. The meetings were held on the second Saturday of the month, and often finished well after midnight after consumption of much pizza. Users brought their latest 1616-related creations to demonstrate and share, and discussion ranged from hardware design, operating system theory, language design, to politics and philosophy.

When the Mortons sold the shop in the 1990s, the meetings moved to their house at

in 2001.

The user group still meets on the second Saturday of every month, although it has been many years since an Applix 1616 has been booted at one, and, everyone being older, the meetings tend to end somewhat before midnight, and pizza is consumed in moderation.

References

External links

• The Applix 1616 Project Andrew Morton's pages on the 1616
• Applix 1616 manuals