I wasn't aware of it.

> Originally the Sony NEWS team had to decide which version of Unix to use: BSD or AT&T System V. The project leader was interested in the potential commercial support for System V, but the engineering team preferred BSD because it had rich networking features including TCP/IP. Eventually BSD was chosen because they believed that computer networks would be important in the future

-- Taken from the Wikipedia related article.

It's a nice detail from the Wikipedia article that Ruby started life on NEWS OS.

Sony have stuck with BSD too. The PlayStation 4 and 5 both run FreeBSD.

The PS 4 yes does run a subset of it, however I am yet to know about the PS 5, given that I no longer have access to the SCEE technology site.

Where did you got the information regarding PS 5 from?

According to some folks on Twitter / Reddit it seems to be running FreeBSD 12. Someone ran an nmap to try and fingerprint it.

If you're into vintage news tech, this was posted to HN a couple of years ago:

https://wayne.lorentz.me/This_TRS-80/

It's a pretty detailed explanation of a TRS-80 running a custom Associated Press ROM.

That's a great link, but this article is about Sony's Network Engineering Workstation, or NEWS.

Funny. I should have been more thorough. I skimmed the article, and thought it was Sony's effort to provide journalists with a portable version of their mainframe-connected boxed back in the office.

I must have made that mental link because of the name, and because of Sony's long history of producing news gathering and production gear. (The predecessor of the Walkman was the Pressman. My first introduction to XML was a Sony media server.)

This is fantastic, thanks for sharing it!

The important thing is that it can probably run NetBSD:

https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/news68k/

(admittedly, there's a warning for this model - 'not tested in many years')

It may not have enough RAM for current NetBSD, the linked article states that 12MB was the maximum that could be installed.

>RAM: 8 MB, extendable to 12 MB

I have fond memories of my PC's from the early 90's with RAM of 4 or 8 MB, and now am amazed that my laptop CPU has 8 MB cache.

Sometimes I wonder, if you could make an OS and useful applications that ran entirely in CPU cache.

The closest thing that I am aware of was Symbolics OpenGenera.

Symbolics (who owned the first ever .com domain on the Internet) made Lisp Machines -- high-powered personal workstations whose entire OS was written in Lisp, right down to the lowest-level code. They used special proprietary processors which executed a sort of Lisp-like bytecode, enabling Lisp to be compiled down into something that ran directly on the metal -- using lists instead of the C model of bytes, words and pointers.

This is the where what is now called the "Windows key" came from: the Lisp Machine's Meta key. That's why Emacs still calls it "meta". Emacs was the native editor of these OSes.

The company devoted a lot of R&D into processor development over the years, moving from arrays of chips to single large chips to smaller chips. Their last hardware was an add-in board that fitted into 680x0 Macintosh computers and ran the Lisp machine's Genera OS in a Classic MacOS window. The code was actually executing on its own hardware in its own separate dedicated RAM and just used the Mac as a display, storage controller and network interface.

After this, the company was unable to keep up with the speed of simpler CPUs that used the C style of design. Symbolics response was to port their OS to run on the most advanced RISC chip of the time: DEC's Alpha processor, the first 64-bit RISC chip.

Symbolics wrote an interpreter for their Lispy bytecode that ran on the Alpha, enabling what was now called OpenGenera to execute as a program under DEC's OSF/1-based UNIX, later called Tru64.

This interpreter was extremely fast because it was implemented to fit entirely into the Alpha's L1 cache -- 8kB each for Instructions and Data. An 8kB runtime meant that it never got flushed while you were running Lisp code.

An install of windows 95 will easily fit in a modern CPU's L3

The typical POWER9 chip has between 80-100~ MB of L3 cache available, which I imagine is more than enough to hold Linux and your choice of userland application in cache.

Now, forcing it to only use cache would be an interesting problem...

Sure. Just port GEOS to the architectures which feature those cachesizes :-)

x86 CPUs have a cache-as-ram mode which is used early in post, before memory is trained.

At first I thought this might have been related to Sun's NeWS, so I was surprised/amused to see the X logo in the image.

AFAIK many professional Sony systems also ran some derivatice of NEWS OS, for instance the fabulous mixing console Oxford OXF-R3.

I used to work for Sony Broadcast and Professional R&D, as a junior sysadmin and all around project technician, in the UK, and visiting the Oxford office was always a highlight. (The mixing console was designed there, iirc)

They used Windows NT on DEC Alphas, and their sysadmin was always nice to me, despite me being very much an annoying junior n00b.

Sony’s commercial broadcast automation system that used robotics to feed tapes into Beta machines, ran this OS.

I have the MIPS version of that portable workstation. It's a beautiful piece of hardware.

Also, one NWS-1520 and another one which I imported from Japan.

Haven't gotten around trying NetBSD on these yet.

> They are released in 1990 at a price of 1,250,00[0] and 1,550,000 Yen, respectively.

1,550,000 yen in 1990 would be about $17,000 USD today.

>> why should there be battery-less portable Workstations

Actually I think the battery in my laptop mostly functions as a UPS, and is rarely used on my lap. I have a home office and used to visit other offices a lot, and the main use case for me is being able to quickly fold my workstation into a bag and take it anywhere. But I plug it in when I get there, and unless I want to code on a plane or a train (I rarely do), it's just a portable workstation.

That's what most people don't understand regarding high spec laptops. Then they will start talking about remote streaming... desktop + cheap laptop = 18-wheeler + bicycle.

> Graphics: 1120×780

Wow.