The NEC RISCstation was a line of computer

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workstat ...

s made by

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network soluti ...

in the mid-1990s, based on MIPS RISC

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...

s and designed to run

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

. A series of nearly identical machines were also sold by NEC in headless (i.e., no video card or framebuffer) configuration as the RISCserver series, and were intended for use as Windows NT workgroup servers. The RISCstation 2000 was announced in June 1994 by NEC with an availability slated for the end of that summer with the release of Windows NT "Daytona" at a price between US$6000 to US$10000.

Historical development

The RISCstations were based on a modified

Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

architecture licensed from MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. (and which was originally designed by Microsoft). Although architecturally similar to contemporaneous

Intel 80386 The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

s (including, for example, a PCI bus), the RISCstations were faster than the

Pentium Pentium is a brand used for a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel. The original Pentium processor from which the brand took its name was first released on March 22, 1993. After that, the Pentium II and P ...

-based workstations of the time. Although based on the Jazz design, the RISCstations did not use the G364 framebuffer, instead using a S3 968-based video card or a

3Dlabs 3Dlabs was a fabless semiconductor company. It was founded in 1994 with headquarters in San Jose, California. It originally developed the GLINT and PERMEDIA high-end graphics chip technology, that was used on many of the world's leading computer g ...

GLiNT-based adapter in a PCI slot.

Form factor

All RISCstations used a standard

IBM AT The IBM Personal Computer/AT (model 5170, abbreviated as IBM AT or PC/AT) was released in 1984 as the fourth model in the IBM Personal Computer line, following the IBM PC/XT and its IBM Portable PC variant. It was designed around the Intel 80 ...

-style tower or minitower case, a motherboard which also met the AT form factor standard, and PCI peripherals (such as the video card) for peripheral expansion.

Operating systems

Several operating systems supported RISCstations. Like all Jazz-based MIPS computers (such as the

MIPS Magnum The MIPS Magnum was a line of computer workstations designed by MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. and based on the MIPS series of RISC microprocessors. The first Magnum was released in March, 1990, and production of various models continued until 1993 ...

), the RISCstations ran the ARC console firmware to boot Windows NT in

little-endian In computing, endianness, also known as byte sex, is the order or sequence of bytes of a word of digital data in computer memory. Endianness is primarily expressed as big-endian (BE) or little-endian (LE). A big-endian system stores the most si ...

mode. The MIPS III architecture was capable of either little-endian or

big-endian In computing, endianness, also known as byte sex, is the order or sequence of bytes of a word of digital data in computer memory. Endianness is primarily expressed as big-endian (BE) or little-endian (LE). A big-endian system stores the most sig ...

operation. However, Microsoft stopped supporting the MIPS architecture in Windows NT after version 4.0. RISCstations ceased production in 1996. In addition to Windows NT, NEC ported 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 ...

to the RISCstation. Although support is lacking from

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

/MIPS for the RISCstation series, they are supported by NetBSD as NetBSD/arc and had been supported by OpenBSD, prior to the termination of the port in 1998.

Models

The RISCstation line included: *RISCstation Image - Acer PICA OEM *RISCstation 2000 **Dual-processor SMP system with two 150 MHz MIPS

R4400 The R4000 is a microprocessor developed by MIPS Computer Systems that implements the MIPS III instruction set architecture (ISA). Officially announced on 1 October 1991, it was one of the first 64-bit microprocessors and the first MIPS III impleme ...

s **EISA **NCR53C700 SCSI *RISCstation 2200 **Single-processor system with a MIPS R4400 microprocessor *RISCstation 2250 *RISCstation 4400 **Dual-processor SMP system with two 250 MHz MIPS R4400 microprocessors

Pricing

In March, 1995, a dual-CPU configuration of the RISCstation 2000 was priced at about $14,000, and came equipped with two 150 MHz MIPS R4400 CPUs, 64 MB of RAM, a 1 GB SCSI hard drive, a 3x CD-ROM drive and a 17-inch NEC-brand CRT monitor.

References

External links

* A press release detailing features and prices of RISCstation 2200 in 1995 * An article from

BYTE Magazine ''Byte'' (stylized as ''BYTE'') was a microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage. "''Byte'' magazine, the leading publication serving the homebrew market ..." '' ...

comparing the RISCstation 2000 to competing Windows NT workstations {{DEFAULTSORT:Nec Riscstation Advanced RISC Computing Computer workstations MIPS architecture Riscstation 64-bit computers