Prime Computer, Inc. was a Natick, Massachusetts-based producer of minicomputers[1] from 1972 until 1992. With the advent of PCs and the decline of the minicomputer industry, Prime was forced out of the market in the early 1990s, and by the end of 2010 the trademarks for both PRIME[2] and PRIMOS[3] no longer existed[4]
The first Prime system was similar to the 16-bit DDP 516. It ran an operating system called DOS, also referred to as PRIMOS 2 (not to be confused with MS-DOS, PC DOS, etc.).
1973: Prime 100
The Prime 100 was a stripped down version of the Prime 200 (no memory parity or floating point).
1974: Prime 300
The Prime 300 had a main store of 32KB to 512KB and from 6MB of Pertec disc storage. It ran DOSVM operating system, also referred to as PRIMOS 3, but still used earlier DOS for booting. One of the first minicomputers with microcode-supported virtual memory capability. The virtual memory was simpler than used in later systems. Addresses were 16bits, with each of up to 32 time-sharing (time slice) users, receiving a virtual 64K-word address space. It had S-mode and R-mode instructions.
An example of the Prime 300 was installed in the mathematics department of the University of Aston in Birmingham, UK and at the Medical University of Hannover, Germany.
1976: Prime 400
The Prime 400 ran at 0.5MIPS, had a main store of up to 8MB and 160MB of disc storage. The name PRIMOS was now used for the operating system, and the P400 ran PRIMOS 4. It ran a V-mode instruction set, along with the S-mode and R-mode instructions. It had a segmented virtual memory architecture, somewhat similar to Multics.
1979: Prime 450, 550, 650, 750[10]—the beginning of the 50 series nomenclature[11][12]
The Prime 550 was an upgrade in performance over the Prime 400. It ran at 0.7MIPS, had up 2MB of memory and 500MB of disc storage and a 9-track tape unit.[13]
The 9955 ran at 4.0MIPS, had 8–16MB of memory and 2.7GB of disc storage and a 9-track tape unit.
Five Prime 9955 computers (uk.ac.salford.sysa to .syse, connected to JANET) were installed at the University of Salford (along with other systems such as the 2250, 2550, and 750); a Prime 9955 was installed at UMIST and a Prime 9655 at Nottingham University.
1986: Prime 2350, 2450, 9755, and 9955-II
1987: Prime 2455, 2755, 6350, and 6550
1989: Prime 2850, 4050, 6450, and 6650
1990: Prime 2950, 4150, and 6150
By 1987, Prime Computer had introduced an alternative line of Intel 80386-based computers, the EXL-316 series, running the Unix operating system.[15] A "new line of Unix-based EXL-7000 computers" was announced in late 1990.[16]
The company was successful in the 1970s and 1980s, peaking in 1988 at number 334 of the Fortune 500. In 1985 the company was the 6th largest in the minicomputer sector, with estimated revenues of US $564 million [9] Much of this was based on the US Banking industry where the Prime Info database was widely accepted.
As of later 1989, Surrey University had the largest Prime Site in Europe, having multiple copies of virtually every 50 series machine (mostly running Primos 20.x, but some still running 19.x).
CAD/CAM Business
Prime was heavily involved with Ford’s internal computer-aided design (CAD) product, Product Design Graphics System (PDGS). Design engineers used PDGS for auto body design, and finite element analysis using NASTRAN. It used a vectorscope from Lundy for a display. At one time in the 1980s, PDGS was the world's largest integrated CAD system, spanning the US, Japan (Mazda was Ford's subsidiary/partner), (Cologne) Germany, (Dunton) England, and (Geelong) Australia. The creators of PDGS, located in building #3 of Ford's Dearborn design headquarters, began working on the concept of parametrically driven geometry, which led to a PRIMEDesign system.
The company also acquired marketing and development rights to the MEDUSA CAD system, initially developed in England by Cambridge Interactive Systems (CIS), and having experience in the domain, the company explored transitioning to a CAD company. In 1982, Prime built a development team around the MEDUSA software and subsequently released several enhanced versions of the CAD/CAM system, branded as Prime MEDUSA. Enhancements included support of SunOS (also supported by CIS MEDUSA), a shaded viewer (based on Movie.BYU), and additional 3d visualization. Prime embarked on a project headed by Vladimir Geisberg to build a CAD-CAM system of its own called PRIMEDesign. This product was to compete with the industry leader at that time, CADDS4 from Computervision. RISC processors from MIPS Technologies and graphics processors from Silicon Graphics created the platform for PRIMEDesign as well as being the genesis of modern-day SGI. During this period, in 1985, Sam Geisberg left Computervision to found Parametric Technology Corporation and produce a parameter driven CAD system called ProEngineer. Computervision acquired Cambridge Interactive Systems in 1983, and Prime independently developed their version of MEDUSA.[citation needed]
Prime subsequently purchased Computervision, and Vladimir Geisberg, then VP for CAD, tried to merge back together the Prime and Computervision versions of the Medusa CAD system, and launch Prime Design. As time passed, it became clear that Prime Design, while leading edge, in theory, was unsuitable for real engineering design work, and Prime Design was ended.
Decline and end
By the late eighties, the company was having problems retaining customers who were moving to lower-cost systems, as minicomputers entered their decline to obsolescence. Prime failed to keep up with customers' increasing need for raw computing power. By the end, not a single Prime computer was subject to COCOM export controls, as they were insufficiently powerful for the US Government to fear their falling into the hands of hostile powers.
In 1988, financier Bennett S. LeBow attempted a hostile takeover of Prime, leveraging his much smaller MAI Basic Four company.[17] To stave off LeBow, Prime management organized a $1.3 billion "white knight" leveraged buyout by J.H. Whitney & Company. Various problems dogged this project, the holding company organized by Whitney went bankrupt, and the resulting severe financial distress made it much harder for Prime to deal with the accelerating downturn in its core business.[18]
Prime's 1991 revenues of $1.2 billion were 25% lower than their 1988 revenues of $1.6 billion. Its computer sales were down by more than half ($377 million in 1989, $170 million in 1991), and by 1992 no new Prime Computers were being sold, portending a decline in its lucrative business of servicing computers made by Prime (and other manufacturers), a significant contributor to its already-declining revenues. A planned 1989 layoff of 1,200 employees[19] became much more: over 6,000, thus Prime's workforce dropped by over half, from 12,386 employees in 1988 to 5,900 by the end of 1991.[18]
After the computer design and manufacturing portions of the company were shut down, the only viable business that remained was the Computervision subsidiary, an early pioneer in CAD/CAM, which was acquired in a hostile takeover 1988. Prime was renamed Computervision, which in 1992 sold the declining remnants of its Prime Information subsidiary to VMark Software Inc.[18]
Computervision was subsequently successfully acquired by Parametric Technology Corporation in 1998, a company founded in 1985 by a former Prime employee.[20]
The company operating system, PRIMOS was originally written mostly in the Fortran IV programming language with some assembler. Subsequently, the PL/P and Modula-2 languages were used in the Kernel. A number of new PRIMOS utilities were written in SP/L which was similar to PL/P.
Phantom, CPL and ED
"Phantoms" were a form of unattended background processes that immediately began to run in the background when initiated by the PHANTOM command. "Conventional" batch jobs were initiated via the JOB command, including the ability to schedule them for a particular time.
While Prime's PRIMOS operating system supported one or more compilers/interpreters for COBOL, FORTRAN, BASIC, RPG and 2 Assemblers,[24] Queo was a step up: a procedural language more compact than COBOL, and with additional capabilities.[25][26]
It was offered by Computer Techniques, Inc. of Olyphant, Pa.[25] Queo later was reimplemented for PCs.[27]
Office Automation System
Prime acquired the OAS application from its developer, ACS America Inc., a now-defunct New York City software house.
It competed in the UK DTI Office Automation Pilot, but did not win.
OAS included electronic mail and word processing. Electronic mail use was initially restricted to a single minicomputer. Much later, Prime released email that worked with multiple Prime computers in a network, and a synchronised global directory system. Word processing was available either on dumb terminals like the PT25, PT45 and PST100, or on the partially intelligent PT65 terminal. The PT65 had to download the word processing software from the host minicomputer whenever the terminal was turned on. The terminal allowed the user to work on one page at a time, which was periodically saved to the minicomputer. This "intelligent workstation" concept for word processing was similar to the functions of popular systems from rival Wang Laboratories. Prime's intelligent workstation for word processing was faster because it used RS232C cabling runs instead of the coaxial links that Wang's systems used. Nonetheless, the word processing was not of the highest quality, and the PT65 was subject to software errors that scrambled the documents being worked on.
OAS also had a bilingual language lookup feature, sometimes marketed as machine translation.
Recognising the drawbacks of the downloadable WP workstation, Prime formed an agreement with Convergent Technologies for their AWS which Prime named the "Prime Producer 100" (launched in mid 1983) and later for Convergent's modular NGEN, clip together system, the "Prime Producer 200" (launched in 1984), each of which had far superior WP to the initial Prime offering, and were document-based.
In the UK, Prime had a very active OAS User Group whose suggestions were acted upon in new product development. UK Pioneers of the system included the London Docklands Development Corporation and Oxford Polytechnic, now Oxford Brookes University.
Devcom, a Microdata reseller, wrote a Pick-style database system called INFORMATION in FORTRAN and assembler in 1979 to run on Prime Computer 50-series systems. INFO/BASIC, a variant of Dartmouth BASIC, was used for database applications. It was then sold to Prime Computer and renamed Prime INFORMATION.[29]
Unlike the Pick operating system, a complete operating system, Prime Information was not an operating system, but a 4GL system that ran from the Prime PRIMOS operating system.
Prime Information was a re-implementation which deliberately left out some features and added others. Prime Information allowed rapid 4GL or 4GL-like development of applications around relational or quasi-relational database structures. After a series of evolutions and acquisitions Prime Information is now an obsolete part of the Rocket U2 software suite.
Prime Information Connection
In c.1984, Prime developed a system to conflict with OAS and confuse the market. Prime Information Connection added word processing to Prime Information, giving the company two office oriented suites to offer in a marketplace dominated by Wang Laboratories.
CAD/CAM
Prime originally entered the CAD industry through Ford. At the time, Ford was using Control Data Corporation (CDC) stand-alone computers. Data was shared via reel tape and stored in "Data Collector" rooms at each facility. Ford began looking for a small computer that had all the advantages of the CDC computers, but could also connect to a network.
Prime’s 2250 ("Rabbit") offered the combination Ford was looking for in a package smaller than the original CDCs. In addition, the PRIMOS operating system would run unaltered across all Prime platforms; from the 2250 up to 750 (what would be considered today as a server). As a result, the Data Collector (rooms) would contain several 750 class machines, each with rows of CDC 300 or 600MB drives. Primenet (Token Ring) network connected all CAD stations in a building with its Data Collector.
Ford pushed PDGS out to its suppliers and engineering contractors throughout the northern Midwest.
Prime gained expertise over the years with its collaboration with Ford and continued to expand into the CAD market with its Medusa product. With the acquisition of ComputerVision, Prime appeared to be a formidable force in the CAD/CAM industry.
Prime Medusa versions 5 and CV Medusa 7 were merged/recombined into a product that was called Medusa version 12. Prime also picked up Calma CAD systems from GE.
Electronic messaging
Electronic messaging was developed on relay.prime.com, which was the hub that relayed global electronic mail for Prime Computer. The software used on this computer system, PDN Mail, developed by Robert Ullmann, was designed to use the encoding header field that was later explained in a Request for Comments.[30] PDN Mail was also used by Microsoft Corporation until MIME was introduced.
Before MIME existed, PDN Mail was able to perform the same functions and was used to send software updates as well as all sorts of attachments between systems. In August 1993, Robert Ullmann, David Robinson and Al Costanzo wrote RFC 1505. This RFC, documented the Encoding Header Field for Internet Messages that PDN mail used and was published by the RFC editor, Jon Postel that same year.
Marketing
A paperclip distributed by Prime Computer as promotional material.
A series of memorable advertisements created by Australian artist Rone Waugh in 1980 featured actors Tom Baker and Lalla Ward as their characters from the TV series Doctor Who. All four of these adverts have since been included on the DVD release of the 1979 serial Destiny of the Daleks in which both actors appear.
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of smaller general-purpose computer developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, The New York Times suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than US$25,000, with an input-output device such as a teleprinter and at least four thousand words of memory, that is capable of running programs in a higher level language, such as Fortran or BASIC.
VAX is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The VAX-11/780, introduced October 25, 1977, was the first of a range of popular and influential computers implementing the VAX ISA. The VAX family was a huge success for DEC, with the last members arriving in the early 1990s. The VAX was succeeded by the DEC Alpha, which included several features from VAX machines to make porting from the VAX easier.
Acorn Archimedes is a family of personal computers designed by Acorn Computers of Cambridge, England. The systems are based on Acorn's own ARM architecture processors and the proprietary operating systems Arthur and RISC OS. The first models were introduced in 1987, and systems in the Archimedes family were sold until the mid-1990s.
Wang Laboratories was a US computer company founded in 1951 by An Wang and G. Y. Chu. The company was successively headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1954–1963), Tewksbury, Massachusetts (1963–1976), and finally in Lowell, Massachusetts (1976–1997). At its peak in the 1980s, Wang Laboratories had annual revenues of US$3 billion and employed over 33,000 people. It was one of the leading companies during the time of the Massachusetts Miracle.
Ultrix is the brand name of Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) discontinued native Unix operating systems for the PDP-11, VAX, MicroVAX and DECstations.
Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, 911 systems, and other similar commercial transaction processing applications requiring maximum uptime and zero data loss. The company was founded by Jimmy Treybig in 1974 in Cupertino, California. It remained independent until 1997, when it became a server division within Compaq. It is now a server division within Hewlett Packard Enterprise, following Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of Compaq and the split of Hewlett-Packard into HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Pyramid Technology Corporation was a computer company that produced a number of RISC-based minicomputers at the upper end of the performance range. It was based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California
The HP 2100 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers that were produced by Hewlett-Packard (HP) from the mid-1960s to early 1990s. Tens of thousands of machines in the series were sold over its twenty-five year lifetime, making HP the fourth largest minicomputer vendor during the 1970s.
Computervision, Inc. (CV) was an early pioneer in Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM). Computervision was founded in 1969 by Marty Allen and Philippe Villers, and headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, United States. Its early products were built on a Data General Nova platform. Starting around 1975, Computervision built its own "CGP" Nova-compatible 16-bit computers with added instructions optimized for graphics applications and using its own operating system known as Computervision Graphic Operating System (CGOS). In the 1980s, Computervision rewrote their code to operate on Unix-based platforms.
Calma Company, based in Sunnyvale, California, was, between 1965 and 1988, a vendor of digitizers and minicomputer-based graphics systems targeted at the cartographic and electronic, mechanical and architectural design markets.
CAD/CAM refers to the integration of Computer-aided design (CAD) and Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). Both of these require powerful computers. CAD software helps designers and draftsmen; CAM "reduces manpower costs" in the manufacturing process.
PRIMOS is a discontinued operating system developed during the 1970s by Prime Computer for its minicomputer systems. It rapidly gained popularity and by the mid-1980s was a serious contender as a mainline minicomputer operating system.
Pertec Computer Corporation (PCC), formerly Peripheral Equipment Corporation (PEC), was a computer company based in Chatsworth, California which originally designed and manufactured peripherals such as floppy drives, tape drives, instrumentation control and other hardware for computers.
The AT&T UNIX PC is a Unix desktop computer originally developed by Convergent Technologies, and marketed by AT&T Information Systems in the mid- to late-1980s. The system was codenamed "Safari 4" and is also known as the PC 7300, and often dubbed the "3B1". Despite the latter name, the system had little in common with AT&T's line of 3B series computers. The system was tailored for use as a productivity tool in office environments and as an electronic communication center.
The Sony NEWS is a series of Unix workstations sold during the late 1980s and 1990s. The first NEWS machine was the NWS-800, which originally appeared in Japan in January 1987 and was conceived as a desktop replacement for the VAX series of minicomputers.
A BBC Micro expansion unit, for the BBC Micro is one of a number of peripherals in a box with the same profile and styling as the main computer.
Whitechapel Computer Works Ltd. (WCW) was a computer workstation company founded in the East End of London, United Kingdom in April 1983 by Timothy Eccles and Bob Newman, with a combined investment of £1 million from the Greater London Enterprise Board, venture capital companies Newmarket and Baillie Gifford, and the Department of Trade and Industry. The company was situated in the Whitechapel Technology Centre - a council-funded high-technology enterprise hub - and began the design of their first workstation model in August 1983, shipping the first units by September 1984.
MEDUSA, is a CAD program used in the areas of mechanical and plant engineering by manufacturers and Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) companies. The system's history is closely tied to the beginnings of mainstream CAD and the research culture fostered by Cambridge University and the UK government as well as the resulting transformation of Cambridge into a world-class tech centre in the 1980s.
MPDS, the MEDUSA Plant Design System, is a suite of plant engineering applications for 2D/3D layout, design and modelling of process plants, factories or installations. The systems history is closely tied to the very beginnings of mainstream CAD and the research culture fostered by Cambridge University and the UK government as well as the resulting "Cambridge Phenomenon" MPDS was initially developed for 3D plant design and layout and piping design. Today, the software includes modules for 2D/3D factory layout, process, instrumentation diagrams (P&ID), mechanical handling systems design, steel design, ducting (HVAC) design, electrical design and hangers and supports Design. The latest version, MPDS4 5.2.1, was released for Microsoft Windows and Sun Solaris in February 2014.
1 2 Alfred Dupont Chandler, Takashi Hikino, Andrew Von Nordenflycht Inventing the electronic century: the epic story of the consumer electronics and computer industries , Harvard University Press, 2005, ISBN0-674-01805-2, pages 104,108,118,148,149.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
