SAIC Talon
| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Introduced | 1994 |
| Period | Maturity (III) |
| Series | Portable |
| CPU | PA-7100LC 60 MHz |
| Caches | 64 KB L1 |
| RAM | 128 MB |
| Design | LASI |
| Drives | 1 SCSI 1 FD |
| Expansion | 1 EISA 2 PCMCIA VME opt. |
| I/O | Ethernet SCSI serial parallel VGA 2 PS/2 audio modem |
SAIC Talon are portable PA-RISC workstations based on HP 9000 712 workstations in a ruggedized case released in 1994. Talon portables are almost unknown today, originally built by SAIC in the 1990s for military and intelligence applications as part of the US Navy TAC-4 program.
HP supplied the US Navy in the 1990s in the TAC-4 program with PA-RISC workstations.
For severe
environments, HP contracted SAIC to produce ruggedized MIL-SPEC workstations for the Navy: the SAIC Talon and Galaxy.
Both Talon and Galaxy were based on HP 9000 712 workstation design, with Talon seemingly even more ruggedized than Galaxy, painted in Forest green, color 24052 per FED-STD-595.
Talon and Galaxy were produced under military contract and used in classified environments, so only few became available to civilian world.
There is scant information available on SAIC Talon.
There were a few other RISC Laptops in the 1990s, with a wide variety of processor architectures such as SPARC, PowerPC and even Alpha.
- SAIC Talon, HP 9000 712, were possibly introduced in 1994
System architecture
Processors
| System | CPU | Speed | L1 Cache |
|---|---|---|---|
| Talon | PA-7100LC | 60 MHz | 1 KB on-chip and 64 KB off-chip |
Chipset
- HP LASI integrated chipset
- Integrated NCR 53C710 8-bit single-ended SCSI-2
- Integrated Intel 82596CA 10 Mbit Ethernet controller
- Integrated HP Harmony CD/DAT quality 16-bit stereo audio
- HP Artist graphics, 8-bit, 1 MB VRAM (could be extended to 2)
- Integrated Other I/O (serial, parallel, floppy)
- PCMCIA controller, possibly from SAIC
- EISA controller, possibly HP Wax
- Optional EISA-VME bridge
- Optional Modem via PCMCIA
Display
- 10.4″ active matrix LCD
- 1024×768 resolution
full-color
Human Input
- 85-key integrated IBM-PC keyboard with 12 function keys
- Three-button
Force
pad
System buses
- GSC system level I/O bus
- SCSI-2 Fast-Narrow single-ended bus
- EISA additional expansion I/O bus
- Optional VME
Memory
- Possibly: 72-pin ECC SIMMs, same as on standard HP 9000 712
- 8-32 MB modules
- Four sockets
- 16 MB (2×8) minimum, 128 MB (4×32) maximum
- Memory has to be installed in pairs, starting from slot 0
Expansion slots
SAIC provided a 14.4k modem for the PCMCIA slot, which are labelled optional in documentation. It is unclear what happened to the standard GSIO/TSIO slots on stock 712 mainboards. It is also unclear how the EISA expansion was added to the system, and how the VME connects to it.
- Optional Two PCMCIA slots, for Type I/II or III
- EISA card slot
- Optional VME through EISA-to-VME extender
Storage
- One 3.5″ Fast-Narrow 50-pin SCSI-2 hard drive
- One 3.5″ 1.44 MB Floppy drive
External ports
- SCSI-2 50-pin Fast-Narrow single-ended
- Serial RS232C DB9 (up to 115200 baud)
- Parallel DB25
- Ethernet RJ45
- Ethernet AUI 15-pin
- VGA HD15
- Two PS/2 connectors for keyboard & mouse
- Three phone jacks (microphone, headphones and line-in)
- Optional Modem
Operating systems
Talons are possibly normal
PA-RISC workstations and should support standard PA-RISC operating systems and software.
- HP-UX, the original HP Unix shipped with it
- HP-UX 11i v1 in 32-bit mode, TCOE and MTOE versions
- HP-UX 11.00 in 32-bit mode
- HP-UX 10.20 32-bit
- HP-UX 10.00 and HP-UX 10.10, pre-Y2K
- HP-UX 9.07 (possibly also 9.05), pre-Y2K
- NeXTSTEP, Mach-based Unix with beautiful GUI, PA-RISC in version 3.3
- PA-RISC Linux, main Linux port to PA-RISC, supported by HP in the 2000s
- OpenBSD, open-source Unix-like, ported to PA-RISC
- NetBSD, open-source Unix-like, ported to PA-RISC
Pictures
Dimensions
| Height | Width | Depth | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 190mm | 508mm | 406mm | 18kg |
Environmental requirements
- Portable requirements: Navy TAC-4
- Shock: three drops in transit case from height of 36″
- Airborne: operating 10,000 feet, MIL-STD-740-1, Grade C, Table 1
- Sand/Dust: Six hours blowing dust at 50° C
- Rain: 1.8″ rain per hour with 40mph wind for 40 minutes
- Salt Fog
- Fungus:
No growth
- Immersion:
Closed transport configuration, 2 hours at depth of 1 meter in transit case
- Solar Radiation: MIL-STD-810E
- Vibration: MIL-STD-167-1
- EMI: MIL-STD-461 surface ship and submarine
Benchmarks
| System | CPU | SPEC92 int | SPEC92 fp | SPEC95 int | SPEC95 fp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Talon | HP PA-7100LC 60 MHz | 67.0 | 85.3 | 2.08 | 2.66 |
Comparison to SPEC benchmark data from other contemporary Unix workstations:
| Sun SPARCstation 20 | Sun SuperSPARC II 75MHz | 125.8 | 121.2 | 3.11 | 3.10 |
| Siemens PCE-5S | Intel Pentium 100MHz | 96.2 | 81.2 | 4.04 | 2.35 |
| SGI Indy | MIPS R4400SC 75MHz | 88.1 | 96.6 | ||
| IBM RS/6000 Notebook 860 | PowerPC 603e 166MHz | 3.94 | 2.71 | ||
| DEC AlphaStation 200 | DEC Alpha 21064 100MHz | 74.6 | 95.2 | 1.48 | 2.79 |
| Sun SPARCstation 10 | Sun SuperSPARC 40MHz | 50.2 | 60.2 | 1.13 | 1.38 |
| Digital DECstation 5000 | MIPS R4000 50MHz | 43.2 | 42.1 | ||
| Tadpole SPARCbook 3 | Sun MicroSPARC 50MHz | 26.4 | 21.0 |
Documentation
- SAIC Talon product page, Science Applications International Corporation (1996) archive.org
- HP/SAIC/HARRIS TEAM WINS $672 MILLION U.S. NAVY TAC-4 CONTRACT, SAIC press release, Januar 1995 archive.org
- RISC Laptops Archive with more information on the many RISC laptops of the 1990s