The GEC Series 63 was a 32-bit minicomputer produced by GEC Computers Limited of the UK during the 1980s in conjunction with A.B. Dick in USA. During development, the computer was known as the R Project. The hardware development (under Dick Ruth and Ed Mack) was done in

Scottsdale, Arizona , settlement_type = City , named_for = Winfield Scott , image_skyline = , image_seal = Seal of Scottsdale (Arizona).svg , image_blank_emblem = City of Scottsdale Script Logo.svg , nick ...

whilst the software was the responsibility of GEC in

Dunstable Dunstable ( ) is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Bedfordshire, England, east of the Chiltern Hills, north of London. There are several steep chalk escarpments, most noticeable when approaching Dunstable from the ...

, UK. The hardware made early use of pipeline concepts, processing one instruction whilst completing the preceding one. Announced in 1983, two operating systems were to be offered: UX63 and OS6000. UX63 was a Unix port derived from UNIX System III, whereas OS6000 was a port of the OS4000

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

from the

GEC 4000 series The GEC 4000 was a series of 16/ 32-bit minicomputers produced by GEC Computers Ltd in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. History GEC Computers was formed in 1968 as a business unit of the GEC conglomerate. It ...

(under pressure from the marketing department, concerned about compatibility with its existing user base). Subsequently a version of

UNIX System V Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...

Release 2 was added - largely to compete with

VAX VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...

machines which were becoming the fashionable computer of choice amongst academics, concerned about being able to access software from US colleagues. The C compiler, necessary to effect the implementation, was first produced for OS4000 and cross-compiled. The Unix product was one of the first ports to a different processor architecture undertaken in the UK, with large chunks of the GEC 63 Unix port done at the University of Edinburgh. (Other comparable early Unix ports included that of the High Level Hardware Orion system which launched with 4.1BSD Unix in 1984, ICL's PNX for the

PERQ The PERQ, also referred to as the Three Rivers PERQ or ICL PERQ, was a pioneering workstation computer produced in the late 1970s through the early 1980s. In June 1979, the company took its very first order from the UK's Rutherford Appleton La ...

workstation in 1983, and a reported port to a Bleasdale Computer Systems product by Root Computer in early 1983. These ports were likely to have been fully operational before GEC 63 Unix was.) There were plans for six models, but only two models of the GEC Series 63 were ever produced: the 63/30 and the 63/40. The 63/40 added an embedded GEC 4160 minicomputer running OS4000 to provide additional communications features (such as

X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet-switched data communication in wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, now ITU-T) in a series of drafts ...

and X.29 access). The Series 63 was used by several UK universities, also being procured with some controversy as part of the

Alvey The Alvey Programme was a British government sponsored research programme in information technology that ran from 1984 to 1990. The programme was a reaction to the Japanese Fifth Generation project, which aimed to create a computer using massi ...

Project, having been chosen as a British-made alternative (along with Systime-produced VAX machines) to the DEC VAX, with DEC's machine being the only one available at the time that was capable of running the specified Berkeley Unix operating system. One of the first student-run university computing facilities in the UK, ''The Tardis Project'', was established in 1988 in the Department of Computer Science of the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

using a Series 63. The name came from the resemblance of the Series 63's large blue cabinet to Doctor Who's time machine. The Series 63 was discontinued in August 1987 after disappointing sales. Approximately 22 systems were sold during the lifetime of the system.

References

External links

* Computing at Chilton
GEC Series 63
{{General Electric Company plc Minicomputers GEC Computers 32-bit computers

See also

References

External links