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.

SAIC 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.

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System chipset

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 Bus
Chipset HP LASI Integrated main chipset GSC
Storage NCR 53C710 [i] GSC
Networking Intel 82596CA [i] 10 Mbit Ethernet controller GSC
Video HP Artist with 1 MB VRAM GSC
Audio HP Harmony [i] CD/DAT quality 16-bit stereo GSC
Cards SAIC? PCMCIA controller GSC
I/O HP LASI [i] Serial and parallel I/O GSC
I/O HP LASI [i] PS/2 for keyboard/mouse GSC

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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
Storage External 50-pin single-ended
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
Network Ethernet TP and AUI
Input Keyboard 85-key keyboard
Input Pointing three-button trackball
Ports PS/2 two ports
Ports Serial RS-232C DB9
Ports Parallel Centronics
Output LCD 10.4″ LCD 1024×768 full-color active matrix
Output Video VGA HD15
Audio Jacks 3 audio jacks
Power AC (no battery)

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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.

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Performance

SPEC benchmark data and comparisons to contemporary laptops and workstations:

Based on old SPEC92 and SPEC95 archives
System CPU SPEC92
int/fp		 SPEC95
int/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

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Documentation

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