RDI PrecisionBook
| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Introduced | 1998 |
| CPU | PA-7300LC 132-180 MHz |
| Cache | 128 KB L1 (+1 MB L2) |
| RAM | 512 MB |
| Design | LASI |
| Drives | 2 SCSI (2.5″!) |
| Expansion | 2 Cardbus |
| Bandwidth | Mem ~ 423 MB/s I/O 132-160 MB/s |
| I/O | 10E VGA SCSI floppy 2 PS/2 docking I/O breakout audio |
Overview
The PrecisionBook portable workstations from RDI (Tadpole), introduced in 1998 are essentially C132L/C160Ls workstations in a portable case. The PrecisionBooks mostly use the same technology as the HP 9000 workstations with only slight differences. A major addition to the desktop cousins is the integrated Cardbus controller for which Tadpole supplied a driver kit for use in HP-UX. OpenBSD fully supports the Cardbus controller and a range of different Cardbus and PCMCIA devices (Fast-Ethernet, WLAN etc.).
The PrecisionBook laptop case was used for other RDI RISC laptops as well, for example their UltraSPARC systems.
Introduced in 1998 for a list price of $14,995 (180 MHz version).
Internals
CPU
- PrecisionBook 132: PA-7300LC 132 MHz with 128 KB on-chip L1 (and 1 MB off-chip L2) cache
- PrecisionBook 160: PA-7300LC 160 MHz with 128 KB on-chip L1 (and 1 MB off-chip L2) cache
- PrecisionBook 180: PA-7300LC 180 MHz with 128 KB on-chip L1 (and 1 MB off-chip L2) cache
The external L2 cache is optional but was supplied with most systems.
Chipset
- LASI chipset
- Phantom PseudoBC GSC+ port
- NCR 53C710 8-bit single-ended SCSI-2
- Intel 82596CA 10 Mbit Ethernet controller
- Harmony CD/DAT quality 16-bit stereo audio
- Dino GSC-to-PCI bridge
- Visualize-EG (Graffiti) graphics
- 1 MB flash memory
- Other I/O (serial, parallel, Floppy)
- Two Cirrus CL-PD6832 PCI-CardBus bridges
- CMD PCI0643 IDE/UDMA33 controller
» View a system-level ASCII-illustration of the chipset.
Display
- Either 12.1″ (0.24mm dot pitch) or 14.1″ (0.28mm dot pitch) active matrix LCD — 14-inch PrecisionBooks were the most frequent
- XGA resolution (1024×768)
- 16M colors
- 60Hz refresh
- External monitor output supports VGA, SVGA, XGA, SXGA and 1600×1200 resolutions at refresh rates of 60, 72 and 75Hz
- At XGA resolution the LCD and an external monitor can be used simultaneously; with different resolutions on the external monitor the LCD blanks
Human Input
- PS/2-compatible, 97-key keyboard
- Three-button trackpad
Energy
- Lithium-Ion battery with 40Wh capacity, 450g
- About 0.5-1 hours of battery capacity
- Recharge time of 2.5 hours when powered off
- Laptop draws about 70W continous
- AC adapter provides 19V (DC) 3.68A, non-standard pinout (though there are some with a standard plug)
Buses
- GSC-2 general system-level I/O bus
- PCI-32/33 device I/O bus
- SCSI-2 Fast-Narrow single-ended bus disk I/O
- PDH bus, peripheral interface connecting to flash memory, NVRAM and PSM bus
- PSM bus, provides connection to the power-supply module
Memory
- Proprietary ECC modules, 60ns, 144-bit wide bus
- Two sockets
- 32-256 MB modules (with 16Mbit or 64Mbit DRAMs in either 1M×16 or 4M×16 configuration)
- 32 MB (1×32) minimum, 512 MB (2×256) maximum
Expansion
- Two Cardbus slots, for Cardbus and PCMCIA expansion cards
Drives
- Two trays for 2.5″ IDE hard drives with SCSI converter or for very rare 2.5″ SCSI drives
- Since 2.5-inch SCSI drives were so rare RDI supplied regular IDE notebook drives together with a special IDE-SCSI converter from ADTXw — in the References section is a link to further details
External connectors
- SCSI-2 50-pin single-ended
- Ethernet RJ45
- VGA 15-pin Dsub graphics connector
- Two PS/2 connectors for keyboard/mouse
- Four phone jacks (microphone, headphones, line-in and ?)
- 15-pin connector for external floppy
- High-pin-count connector for docking station
- Connector for special I/O breakout cable for:
- Two Serial RS232C DB9
- Parallel DB25
- AUI 10 Mbit Ethernet
References
- PrecisionBook hardware reference guide (URL gone)
- PrecisionBook user guide (URL gone)
- RDI software for HP-UX 10.20 installation guide
- RDI software release notes
- ADTX SCSI-IDE converters information from Michael Shalayeff.
Operating systems
Benchmarks
| Model | SPEC95, int | SPEC95, fp |
|---|---|---|
| PrecisionBook 132 | 6.49 | 6.54 |
| PrecisionBook 160 | 7.78 | 7.39 |
| PrecisionBook 180 | 9.22 | 9.43 |