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45-445: The RT PC's specifications were regarded as "less than impressive" compared to contemporary workstations by its competitors in that particular market, although the product was deemed deserving of "a healthy amount of respect", particularly with the prospect of IBM as "a serious competitor" who, despite having a product whose performance was an estimated 18 months behind other vendors, would potentially be able to catch up quickly by applying

90-541: A LAN TCP/IP interface. One of the novel aspects of the RT design was the use of a microkernel . The keyboard, mouse, display, disk drives and network were all controlled by a microkernel, called Virtual Resource Manager (VRM), which allowed multiple operating systems to be booted and run at the same time. One could "hotkey" from one operating system to the next using the Alt-Tab key combination. Each OS in turn would get possession of

135-566: A computer network much like local storage is accessed. NFS, like many other protocols, builds on the Open Network Computing Remote Procedure Call (ONC RPC) system. NFS is an open IETF standard defined in a Request for Comments (RFC), allowing anyone to implement the protocol. Sun used version 1 only for in-house experimental purposes. When the development team added substantial changes to NFS version 1 and released it outside of Sun, they decided to release

180-460: A transport-layer protocol began increasing. While several vendors had already added support for NFS Version 2 with TCP as a transport, Sun Microsystems added support for TCP as a transport for NFS at the same time it added support for Version 3. Using TCP as a transport made using NFS over a WAN more feasible, and allowed the use of larger read and write transfer sizes beyond the 8 KB limit imposed by User Datagram Protocol . WebNFS

225-544: A IBM 9309 Rack Enclosure; this a first generation RS/6000 server running AIX. These units were configured by IBM as experimental "NSS" ("Network Switching Subsystem") routers, and used on the NSFnet T3 backbone in the early/mid-90s. Produced since 1994 until the time were the RS/6000 line was rebranded to System P. The Model N40 was a PowerPC-based laptop developed and manufactured by Tadpole Technology in conjunction with IBM. It

270-554: A large cabinet that would have been positioned alongside the RT PC. The 5080 was used with a 1,024- by 1,024-pixel IBM 5081 display. The 6152 Academic System was a PS/2 Model 60 with a RISC Adapter Card, a Micro Channel board containing a ROMP, its support ICs, and up to 8   MB of memory. It allowed the PS/2 to run ROMP software compiled for the AOS. AOS was downloaded from a RT PC running AOS, via

315-419: A method of separating the filesystem meta-data from file data location; it goes beyond the simple name/data separation by striping the data amongst a set of data servers. This differs from the traditional NFS server which holds the names of files and their data under the single umbrella of the server. Some products are multi-node NFS servers, but the participation of the client in separation of meta-data and data

360-459: A modular implementation, reflected in a simple protocol. By February 1986, implementations were demonstrated for operating systems such as System V release 2, DOS , and VAX/VMS using Eunice . NFSv2 only allows the first 2 GB of a file to be read due to 32-bit limitations. Version 3 (RFC 1813, June 1995) added: The first NFS Version 3 proposal within Sun Microsystems

405-405: A phone number (via a modem) in case of serious failure with the machine. Early advertisements and documentation called the service processor "System Guard", (or SystemGuard ) although this name was apparently dropped later on, roughly around the same time that the simplified RS/6000 name was adopted for the computer line itself. Late in the RS/6000 cycle, the service processor was "converged" with

450-505: A similar agreement to give ISOC change control over NFS, although writing the contract carefully to exclude NFS version 2 and version 3. Instead, ISOC gained the right to add new versions to the NFS protocol, which resulted in IETF specifying NFS version 4 in 2003. By the 21st century, neither DFS nor AFS had achieved any major commercial success as compared to SMB or NFS. IBM, which had formerly acquired

495-463: A special board slot for the processor card, as well as machine-specific RAM cards. Each machine had one processor slot, one co-processor slot, and two RAM slots. There were three versions of the processor card: All RT PCs supported up to 16   MB of memory. Early models were limited to 4   MB of memory because of the capacity of the DRAM ICs used, later models could have up to 16   MB. I/O

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540-525: A variant of the PL/I programming language, which proved troublesome during the migration to AIX v3. AIX v2 included full TCP/IP networking support, as well as SNA , and two networking file systems: NFS , licensed from Sun Microsystems , and IBM Distributed Services (DS). DS had the distinction of being built on top of SNA, and thereby being fully compatible with DS on the IBM midrange AS/400 and mainframe systems. For

585-531: Is a family of RISC -based Unix servers , workstations and supercomputers made by IBM in the 1990s. The RS/6000 family replaced the IBM RT PC computer platform in February 1990 and is the first computer line to see the use of IBM's POWER and PowerPC based microprocessors. In October 2000, the RS/6000 brand was retired for POWER-based servers and replaced by the eServer pSeries . Workstations continued under

630-504: Is available in some enterprise solutions as VMware ESXi . NFS version 4.2 (RFC 7862) was published in November 2016 with new features including: server-side clone and copy, application I/O advise, sparse files, space reservation, application data block (ADB), labeled NFS with sec_label that accommodates any MAC security system, and two new operations for pNFS (LAYOUTERROR and LAYOUTSTATS). One big advantage of NFSv4 over its predecessors

675-487: Is available on: During the development of the ONC protocol (called SunRPC at the time), only Apollo's Network Computing System (NCS) offered comparable functionality. Two competing groups developed over fundamental differences in the two remote procedure call systems. Arguments focused on the method for data-encoding — ONC's External Data Representation (XDR) always rendered integers in big-endian order, even if both peers of

720-429: Is limited. The NFSv4.1 pNFS server is a set of server resources or components; these are assumed to be controlled by the meta-data server. The pNFS client still accesses one meta-data server for traversal or interaction with the namespace; when the client moves data to and from the server it may directly interact with the set of data servers belonging to the pNFS server collection. The NFSv4.1 client can be enabled to be

765-437: Is that only one UDP or TCP port, 2049, is used to run the service, which simplifies using the protocol across firewalls. WebNFS , an extension to Version 2 and Version 3, allows NFS to integrate more easily into Web-browsers and to enable operation through firewalls. In 2007 Sun Microsystems open-sourced their client-side WebNFS implementation. Various side-band protocols have become associated with NFS. Note: NFS

810-708: The Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) and the DCE Distributed File System (DFS) over Sun/ONC RPC and NFS. DFS used DCE as the RPC, and DFS derived from the Andrew File System (AFS); DCE itself derived from a suite of technologies, including Apollo's NCS and Kerberos . Sun Microsystems and the Internet Society (ISOC) reached an agreement to cede "change control" of ONC RPC so that

855-613: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) after Sun Microsystems handed over the development of the NFS protocols. NFS version 4.1 (RFC 5661, January 2010; revised in RFC 8881, August 2020) aims to provide protocol support to take advantage of clustered server deployments including the ability to provide scalable parallel access to files distributed among multiple servers (pNFS extension). Version 4.1 includes Session trunking mechanism (Also known as NFS Multipathing) and

900-539: The Open Software Foundation (OSF) in 1988. Ironically, Sun and AT&T had formerly competed over Sun's NFS versus AT&T's Remote File System (RFS), and the quick adoption of NFS over RFS by Digital Equipment, HP, IBM, and many other computer vendors tipped the majority of users in favor of NFS. NFS interoperability was aided by events called "Connectathons" starting in 1986 that allowed vendor-neutral testing of implementations with each other. OSF adopted

945-542: The PowerPC 604e -based Deep Blue supercomputer that beat world champion Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, and the POWER3 -based ASCI White which was the fastest supercomputer in the world during 2000–2002. Many RS/6000 and subsequent pSeries machines came with a service processor, which booted itself when power was applied and continuously ran its own firmware, independent of the operating system. The service processor could call

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990-607: The ISOC's engineering-standards body, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), could publish standards documents (RFCs) related to ONC RPC protocols and could extend ONC RPC. OSF attempted to make DCE RPC an IETF standard, but ultimately proved unwilling to give up change control. Later, the IETF chose to extend ONC RPC by adding a new authentication flavor based on Generic Security Services Application Program Interface (GSSAPI), RPCSEC GSS , to meet IETF requirements that protocol standards have adequate security. Later, Sun and ISOC reached

1035-669: The RS/6000 brand until 2002, when new POWER-based workstations were released under the IntelliStation POWER brand. The first RS/6000 models used the Micro Channel bus, later models used PCI . Some later models conformed to the PReP and CHRP standard platforms, which were co-developed with Apple and Motorola , with Open Firmware . The plan was to enable the RS/6000 to run multiple operating systems such as Windows NT , NetWare , OS/2 , Solaris , Taligent , AIX and Mac OS but in

1080-605: The RT PC was introduced in January 1986, it competed with several workstations from established providers: the Apollo Computer Domain Series 3000 , the DEC MicroVAX II , and Sun Microsystems Sun-3 . In 1987, "The NSF starts to implement its T1 backbone between the supercomputing centers with 24 RT-PCs in parallel implemented by IBM as ‘parallel routers’. The T1 idea is so successful that proposals for T3 speeds in

1125-505: The RT inferior to other computers. The performance of the RT, in comparison with other contemporaneous Unix workstations , was not outstanding. In particular, the floating point performance was poor, and was scandalized mid-life with the discovery of a bug in the floating point square root routine. With the RT system's modest processing power (when first announced), and with announcements later that year by some other workstation vendors, industry analysts questioned IBM's directions. AIX for

1170-584: The RT was IBM's second foray into UNIX (its first was PC/IX for the IBM PC in September 1984.) The lack of software packages and IBM's sometimes lackluster support of AIX, in addition to sometimes unusual changes from traditional, de facto UNIX operating system standards, caused most software suppliers to be slow in embracing the RT and AIX. The RT found its home mostly in the CAD / CAM and CATIA markets, with some inroads into

1215-562: The backbone begin. Internet History of 1980s The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was the forerunner of the Internet . From July 1988 to November 1992, the NSFNET's T1 backbone network used routers built from multiple RT PCs (typically nine) interconnect by a Token Ring LAN. This entry incorporates text from the RT/PC FAQ . RS/6000 The RISC System/6000 ( RS/6000 )

1260-536: The company's renowned technological capabilities. Given such performance limitations, the RT PC had little commercial success as a result. IBM responded by introducing the RS/6000 workstations in 1990, which used a new IBM-proprietary RISC processor, the POWER1 . All RT PC models were discontinued by May 1991. Two basic types were produced: a floor-standing desk-side tower (IBM 6150), and a desktop (IBM 6151). Both types featured

1305-724: The connection had little-endian machine-architectures, whereas NCS's method attempted to avoid byte-swap whenever two peers shared a common endianness in their machine-architectures. An industry-group called the Network Computing Forum formed (March 1987) in an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to reconcile the two network-computing environments. In 1987, Sun and AT&T announced they would jointly develop AT&T's UNIX System V Release 4. This caused many of AT&T's other licensees of UNIX System to become concerned that this would put Sun in an advantaged position, and ultimately led to Digital Equipment, HP, IBM, and others forming

1350-517: The end only IBM's Unix variant AIX was used and supported on RS/6000. Linux is widely used on CHRP based RS/6000s, but support was added after the RS/6000 name was changed to eServer pSeries in 2000. The RS/6000 family also included the POWERserver servers, POWERstation workstations and Scalable POWERparallel supercomputer platform. While most machines were desktops, desksides, or rack-mounted, there were laptop models too. Famous RS/6000s include

1395-616: The graphical user interfaces, AIX v2 came with the X10R3 and later the X10R4 and X11 releases of the X Window System from MIT , together with the Athena widget set . Compilers for C and Fortran programming languages were available. Some RT PCs were also shipped with the Academic Operating System (AOS), an IBM port of 4.3BSD Unix to the RT PC. It was offered as an alternative to AIX ,

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1440-500: The keyboard, mouse and display. Both AIX version 2 and the Pick operating system were ported to this microkernel. Pick was unique in being a unified operating system and database, and ran various accounting applications. It was popular with retail merchants, and accounted for about 4,000 units of sales. The primary operating system for the RT was AIX version 2. Much of the AIX v2 kernel was written in

1485-535: The new version as v2, so that version interoperation and RPC version fallback could be tested. Version 2 of the protocol (defined in RFC 1094, March 1989) originally operated only over User Datagram Protocol (UDP). Its designers meant to keep the server side stateless , with locking (for example) implemented outside of the core protocol. People involved in the creation of NFS version 2 include Russel Sandberg , Bob Lyon , Bill Joy , Steve Kleiman , and others. The Virtual File System interface allows

1530-521: The one used on the AS/400 machines. POWER machines typically ran AIX . Solaris, OS/2 and Windows NT were also ported to PowerPC. Later Linux was also used. Some AIX systems support IBM Web-based System Manager . Some models were marketed under the RS/6000 POWERstation and POWERserver names. The early lines were based on an IBM proprietary Micro Channel architecture ; the same architecture that

1575-456: The primary commercial vendor of DFS and AFS, Transarc , donated most of the AFS source code to the free software community in 2000. The OpenAFS project lives on. In early 2005, IBM announced end of sales for AFS and DFS. In January, 2010, Panasas proposed an NFSv4.1 based on their Parallel NFS (pNFS) technology claiming to improve data-access parallelism capability. The NFSv4.1 protocol defines

1620-739: The scientific and educational areas, especially after the announcement of AOS and substantial discounts for the educational community. The RT running the Pick OS also found use as shopping store control systems, given the strong database, accounting system and general business support in the Pick OS. The RT also did well as an interface system between IBM's larger mainframes, due to its SNA and DS support, and some of its point-of-sale terminals, store control systems, and machine shop control systems. Approximately 23,000 RTs were sold over its lifetime, with some 4,000 going into IBM's development and sales organizations. Pick OS sales accounted for about 4,000 units. When

1665-419: The starting point. Both of those changes have later been incorporated into NFSv4. Version 4 (RFC 3010, December 2000; revised in RFC 3530, April 2003 and again in RFC 7530, March 2015), influenced by Andrew File System (AFS) and Server Message Block (SMB), includes performance improvements, mandates strong security, and introduces a stateful protocol. Version 4 became the first version developed with

1710-547: The system. Problems with reading unaligned data on the RT forced an incompatible protocol change, leading to version 10 in late 1985. Personal Computer World said "it's hard to see what you get with the 6150 that you can't get by combining any other Unix box to run multi-user applications, with a cheap AT clone to run single-user PC applications". Many thought that the RT was part of IBM's Personal Computer line of computers. This confusion started with its initial name, "IBM RT PC". Initially, it seemed that even IBM thought that it

1755-447: The usual RT PC operating system , to US universities eligible for an IBM educational discount. AOS added a few extra features to 4.3BSD, notably NFS , and an almost ANSI C -compliant C compiler . A later version of AOS existed that was derived from 4.3BSD-Reno, but it was not widely distributed. The RT forced an important stepping-stone in the development of the X Window System, when a group at Brown University ported X version 9 to

1800-585: Was a high-end Personal Computer given the initially stunning lack of support that it received from IBM. This could be explained by the sales commission structure the IBM gave the system: salesmen received commissions similar to those for the sale of a PC. With typically configured models priced at $ 20,000, it was a hard sell, and the lack of any reasonable commission lost the interest of IBM's sales force. Both MIT 's Project Athena and Brown University 's Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship found

1845-484: Was an extension to NFSv2 and NFSv3 allowing it to function behind restrictive firewalls without the complexity of Portmap and MOUNT protocols. WebNFS had a fixed TCP/UDP port number (2049), and instead of requiring the client to contact the MOUNT RPC service to determine the initial filehandle of every filesystem, it introduced the concept of a public filehandle (null for NFSv2, zero-length for NFSv3) which could be used as

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1890-509: Was created not long after the release of NFS Version 2. The principal motivation was an attempt to mitigate the performance issue of the synchronous write operation in NFS Version ;2. By July 1992, implementation practice had solved many shortcomings of NFS Version 2, leaving only lack of large file support (64-bit file sizes and offsets) a pressing issue. At the time of introduction of Version 3, vendor support for TCP as

1935-518: Was provided by eight ISA bus slots. Storage was provided by a 40 or 70   MB hard drive, upgradeable to 300   MB. External SCSI cabinets could be used to provide more storage. Also standard were a mouse and either a 720×512 or 1024×768 pixel-addressable display, and a 4   Mbit/s Token Ring network adapter or 10BASE2 Ethernet adapter. For running CADAM , a computer-aided design (CAD) program, an IBM 5080 or 5085 graphics processor could be attached. The 5080 and 5085 were contained in

1980-439: Was released on 25 March 1994, priced at US$ 12,000. The internal batteries could power the system for 45 minutes only and an external battery pack that lasted for 4 hours was available for this reason. Network File System (protocol) Network File System ( NFS ) is a distributed file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems (Sun) in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over

2025-468: Was used in the high end PS/2 x86 desktop line. MCA-based lines were produced until 1999. These workstations were marketed under the PowerStation name. This type was for Xstations, IBM's line of X terminal . The 380, 390, and 39H servers correspond to the 3AT, 3BT, and 3CT workstations. The 7016-730 model was a version of 7013-530 model, but with licensed by Silicon Graphics graphics card. Uses

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