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PA-RISC information - since 1999

SAIC Galaxy 1100

Quick Facts
Introduced 1994
Period Maturity (III)
CPU 1 PA-7100LC
60/80 MHz
Caches 64/256 KB L1
RAM 128 MB
Design LASI
Drives 1 SCSI
1 FD
Expansion 2 PCMCIA
(1 GIO
1 TSIO)
Bandwidth Cache 480 MB/s
System 128 MB/s
I/O 10E
SCSI
serial
parallel
VGA
2 PS/2
audio

The SAIC Galaxy 1100 were portable PA-RISC workstations based on the HP 9000/712 workstation in a ruggedized case released in 1994. They are not notebooks in the current sense but portable workstations — no battery but standard AC power. Since the Galaxy 1100 are technically normal PA-RISC workstations they support standard PA-RISC operating systems and software. The Galaxy 1000 were the 60 MHz version, the Galaxy 1100 was 80 MHz.

The Galaxy 1100 portables are very rare, originally built in the 90s for military and intelligence applications. HP PA-RISC computers were part of the US Navy TAC-4 program through which HP supplied HP 9000 PA-RISC workstations to the US Navy for measurement and control.

For environments where standard workstations were not robust enough, HP contracted with SAIC to produce a ruggedized MIL-SPEC portable workstation for the Navy — the SAIC Galaxy 1100 based on the HP 9000 712.

SAIC developed several specialized I/O devices for the Galaxy that attached to GIO/TSIO expansion slots. Industry-standard PCMCIA slots were available as well through a SAIC-specific extension board. As these systems were produced under a military contract and sometimes used in classified environment only few became available to civilian world. Only two other portable PA-RISC computers were sold – the RDI PrecisionBook, based on HP Visualize C132L, and the Japanese Hitachi 3050RX/100C; the SAIC Galaxy was not directly sold outside of military contracts and only later became available publically through resellers.

A long article on SAIC Galaxy 1100 and their VUE environment by Cameron Kaiser from 2023 expands on the background and historic usage of Galaxy computers and some technicals.

System architecture

Processors

Model CPU Speed L1 Cache
Galaxy 1000 PA-7100LC 60 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 64 KB off-chip
Galaxy 1100 PA-7100LC 80 MHz 1 KB on-chip and 256 KB off-chip

Chipset

Display

Human Input

System buses

Memory

Expansion slots

Storage

External ports

Operating systems

Benchmarks

Model SPEC92, int SPEC92, fp SPEC95, int SPEC95, fp
Galaxy 1100 80 MHz 99 122 3.12 3.55

Dimensions

Height Width Depth Weight
114mm 412mm 311mm 8kg

References

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