SAIC Talon

SAIC Galaxy
SAIC Talon © SAIC 1996

SAIC, an American government contractor, developed the Talon mobile PA-RISC workstation as part of a military contract, TAC-4 in 1994. SAIC Talon are based on HP 9000/712 Unix workstations integrated into robust cases (19kg!).

Talons are no RISC laptops but, like the SAIC Galaxy 1100, mobile workstations to be used with AC power. They are extremely rare and were originally built for classified military and intelligence (ISR) applications. Talons are standard PA-RISC workstations, modified by SAIC, for standard HP-UX.

Talon
Based on HP 9000/712
Introduced 1994
CPU PA-7100LC 60 MHz
Cache 64 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, EISA, opt. VME
I/O Ethernet, VGA, SCSI, PS/2, audio, 2 serial, parallel
OS HP-UX
Price

SAIC built another PA-RISC portable, the SAIC Galaxy, while there was a true PA-RISC laptop with the RDI PrecisionBook from the builder of a range of other RISC laptops in the 1990s and 2000s.

Technical details

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

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

Expansion and devices

There were few possibilities to expand the SAIC Talon 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 Type I/II or Type III
Cards EISA one slot for EISA cards
Cards VME optional EISA-to-VME converter
Input PS/2 85-key keyboard and three-button trackball
Output LCD 10.4″ LCD 1024×768 full-color active matrix

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

Operating systems

SAIC Talon 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 PA-RISC 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
System CPU SPEC92 int SPEC92 fp SPEC95 int SPEC95 fp
SAIC Talon HP PA-7100LC 60 MHz 67.0 85.3 2.08 2.66
Comparisons
Siemens PCE-5S Intel Pentium 100MHz 96.2 81.2 4.04 2.35
IBM RS/6000 860 PowerPC 603e 166MHz 3.94 2.71
RDI PowerLite 110 Sun microSPARC-II 110 MHz 77.0 65.3
Tadpole SPARCbook 3 Sun MicroSPARC 50MHz 26.4 21.0

Documentation

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