ac999321@umbc5.umbc.edu (Robert D. Davis) (03/28/91)
Hello,
This message is to anyone who is familiar with, or was once familiar
with, PERQ computers, or who knows of _any_ information at all about
PERQ computers (produced by Three Rivers Computer Corp. in Pittsburgh, PA
which later changed its name to PERQ Systems (PQS), also known as
ICL PERQ, and went out of business around 1985).
I am seeking _*ANY*_ information at all that anyone can provide me
with, that has anything to do with PERQ computers. Any comments about
your experiences using them, any undocumented information or O.S. commands
for any of the PERQ's operating systems (POS, Accent, PNX), any information
pertaining to ways of solving any hardware or software problems, any
tricks that you may have discovered to make getting anything done with
them any easier, any historical information about them, any information
on applications programs developed for them, or anything else at all that
you can think of. No bits of information that you can provide would be
considered too small or insignificant.
After having obtained several of these machines in non-working
condition a year ago, and not really knowing anything at all about them,
I spent a great many hours performing "detective work" to locate information
about them, and to find manuals, software, and working parts for them over
the past year. During this time, I found out quite a bit of fascinating
information about them. I also began to realize the historical significance
of these, for the most part forgotten and overlooked, machines; the first
commercially produced graphics workstations.
With this in mind, I began to think that it would be a terrible
waste not to share what I have found out about these systems, through
information obtained though the help of many people, reading through lots
of documentation, and my own personal experiences with using these machines.
For this reason, I have begun writing a manuscript, which I hope will
eventually turn into a published book, about the PERQs; when (if) it
reaches this stage, I will include the names of all those who have
contributed any useful information in the book. As I said before, _any_
bits of information, no matter how small, would be very much appreciated.
I apologize for taking up net bandwidth for these messages seeking
this information, but I do feel that a such a book pertaining to the
first commercially produced graphics workstations, the PERQs, would be
of historical value and would be of interest to many people, and I feel
that the PERQ computers are very worthy of recognition. To those who
have provided me with so much interesting and useful information about,
and help with, the PERQS over the past year, I appreciate it very
much.
Robert D. Davis
BTW, if there are any Perq users out there who are interested in the
formation of a PERQ users group, please contact me. Thank you.
**********************************************************************
Robert D. Davis # Any opinions expressed above are my own
+1-301-744-7964 # and not those of my computer systems.
ac999321@umbc5.umbc.edu #-------------------------------------------