SAIC Galaxy

SAIC Galaxy laptop
© SAIC

SAIC, an American government contractor, developed the SAIC Galaxy mobile PA-RISC workstation as part of a military contract, TAC-4 in 1994. SAIC Galaxy were based on HP 9000/712 Unix workstations integrated into robust cases (8kg!).

SAIC Galaxy 1100 were no RISC laptops but mobile workstations to be used with AC power with no batteries. They are pretty rare and were originally built for military and intelligence (ISR) applications. Besides a few modifications, Galaxy 1100 are standard PA-RISC workstations and support standard PA-RISC operating systems and software.

Galaxy 1000 Galaxy 1100
Based on HP 9000/712 HP 9000/712
Introduced 1994 1994
CPU PA-7100LC
60 MHz
PA-7100LC
80 MHz
Cache 64 KB L1 256 KB L1
Design 32-bit RISC HP PA-RISC with HP LASI chipset
RAM 16-128 MB
Video HP Artist 1 MB
Screen 10.4″ LCD
Drives SCSI drive and floppy
Expansion Two PCMCIA, GIO/TSIO
I/O Ethernet, VGA, SCSI, PS/2, audio, 2 serial, parallel
OS HP-UX
Price
SAIC Galaxy SAIC Galaxy 1100 SPARC Laptops
SAIC Galaxy 1100 © SAIC 1994

Another PA-RISC laptop was the slightly newer PrecisionBook from RDI, who also built a range of other RISC laptops in the 1990s and 2000s.

Technical details

SAIC Galaxy were 32-bit PA-RISC computers based on integrated HP workstations designs, which SAIC built into a portable case. Chipset and devices used were:

[i] - integrated into chipset
Usage Device Type External
Chipset HP LASI Integrated main chipset
Storage NCR 53C710 [i] 8-bit single-ended SCSI-2 50-pin single-ended
Networking Intel 82596CA [i] 10 Mbit Ethernet controller TP and AUI
Video HP Artist with 1 MB VRAM VGA HD15
Audio HP Harmony [i] CD/DAT quality 16-bit stereo 3 audio jacks
Cards ? PCMCIA controller two slots (see below)
I/O ? Serial and parallel I/O RS-232C DB9 and DB25 port
I/O ? PS/2 for keyboard/mouse 2 ports

Expansion and devices

There were few possibilities to expand the PrecisionBook with devices:

Device Type Details
Memory ECC four sockets for 72-pin SIMMs, 16-128 MB
Storage SCSI one 3.5″ SCSI drive, fast SE
Media Floppy 3.5″ Floppy for 1.44MB
Cards PCMCIA two slots for two Type I/II or one Type III
Cards GIO/TSIO two slots for proprietary HP/SAIC modules
Input PS/2 84-key keyboard and three-button trackball
Output LCD 10.4″ LCD 1024×768 (256 colors) active matrix

SAIC Galaxy had no battery, they were mobile workstations connected to AC.

Operating systems

SAIC Galaxy were transportable Unix workstations and were shipped with HP-UX, supported in versions 10.20, 11.00 and 11i v1. Open source systems run quite well on them since the mid-2000s with Linux, NetBSD and OpenBSD supporting them plus possibly NeXTSTEP/PA-RISC and others.

Benchmarks

SPEC benchmark data and comparisons to contemporary laptops and workstations:

Based on old SPEC92 and SPEC95 archives
Model CPU SPEC92 int SPEC92 fp SPEC95 int SPEC95 fp
Galaxy 1100 HP PA-7100LC 80 MHz 99.0 122.0 3.12 3.55
Comparisons
RDI PowerLite 110 Sun microSPARC-II 110 MHz 77.0 65.3
IBM RS/6000 860 PowerPC 603e 166MHz 3.94 2.71
Tadpole SPARCbook 3 Sun MicroSPARC 50MHz 26.4 21.0
Comparison

References

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