Tektronix 6130 Workstation
The Tektronix 6000 series of computers were announced in October 1984 and introduced in 1985. The line included the 6100 and 6200 ranges of models, intended to fill roles from process control, to scientific analysis and software development, to computer aided engineering and design (CAD/CAE). The entry level started with the 6110 Instrument Controller, which was sold with a real-time executive, all the way up to the 6212, a deskside workstation featuring two NS32032 CPUs for computation and an NS32016 dedicated to I/O functions.
The 6130 Intelligent Graphics Workstation could be configured as a workstation or server, and was based on the 32-bit National Semiconductor NS32016 CPU. It was the top model in the 6100 range, which was code named "Stratos," and was priced at $9,500 for the base 6130 configuration on the mid-1985 pricelist (equivalent to roughly $27,800 in 2025). The 6100 range also included the 6110 Instrument Controller and the 6120 ANSI BASIC-oriented workstation. All 6100 models used the same system board, packaged with different hardware and software options from the factory.
The 6130 was available with a framebuffer (to be confirmed, but cut-outs for ports are present), a graphics-capable serial terminal like the Tektronix 4105, or a simple character terminal. It shipped with the UTek operating system, based on 4.2BSD UNIX, but with a number of enhancements and additions. Software available from Tektronix included the 20/20 spreadsheet, Minitab statistics package, GKS or PLOT10 graphics, Q-ONE word processing system, and TekniCAD. Languages including BASIC, C, FORTRAN, and Pascal could be used to support application development.
Documentation, Media, and Pictures
The Bitsavers project is an invaluable conservator of computing history. They have archived and keep available a number of documents and pictures related to the 6100 series of computers, as well as images of distribution floppies for the UTek 2.2 operating system and some additional packages for the 6100 series. (Media images originally supplied by r. bear stricklin.)
Another site with a great deal of information about Tektronix products is TekWiki (at w140.com), though the majority of those products fall in the instrumentation and test equipment categories. However the collection includes PDFs of many years of the Tektronix product catalogs and brochures, which gives us an opportunity to see how Tektronix presented the 6000 family, and its successor the 4132.
Compiled Packages for the 6100 Series
Some open source and/or public domain software has been built and packaged for UTek 2.2 on the 6100 series. They can be installed using the sysadmin(8) utility, as described in the Administration Guide.
Feel free to browse the packages that have been built so far using this link. Sources are also available in a sub-directory, and in some cases the "diffs" or patches that were made to the original source so it would compile on UTek 2.2.
Note: The UTek packaging system is effective but simplistic, and if the number of links to a directory inode differs from the package Bill Of Materials (BOM) then the installation is declared a failure, even though the package contents were deployed successfully. Be sure to check the "failed" BOM file before deciding that any package actually failed to install correctly.
Bootable UTek System Disk Images
When the first 6130 was acquired and found to boot the installed UTek 2.3 OS successfully, an image of the 20MB Micropolis 1302 system disk was made using an MFM hard disk emulator by David Gesswein. While there were about 33 bad sectors reported during reading, the image is bootable and the system will run. But there is not much software included, and the packages built on UTek 2.2 have not been tested on it.
After the UTek 2.2 media was made available, a 6130 was brought up and a fresh installation of UTek 2.2 was created on an emulated 105MB Maxtor XT-1140. A number of additional software products were installed, including the Tektronix supplied C, FORTRAN, and Pascal compilers. A copy of the installed system is available for download, to help anybody with access to a working 6100 series computer get started.
Related to this, in case somebody has a 6100 in rough shape, or is trying to get an emulator going, here are links to EPROM dumps and whatnot.
Other Resources
There are a number of other interesting sources of information on the Internet related to the Tektronix NS32000-based computers, and/or the NS32000 family of CPUs in general.
- Press Releases:
- Datasheets and Technical Documents
- Software
- History, Anecdotes, and Artifacts
Similar Pages/Projects
This section is reserved for pages of a similar nature - bringing attention to orphaned machines. Not limited to Tektronix systems, but will lean towards lesser-known (or less-remembered?) systems.
Thanks and Recognition
Thanks to all the Tektronix engineers and programmers who worked on the Tektronix workstation products, especially the Stratos and Merlin platforms.
Many, many thanks to r. bear stricklin for the UTek 2.2 media images, and to Al Kossow at Bitsavers for ensuring they'll be widely available - as well as the documentation explaining how to use it! Without both of these things the 6130 would be a lot harder to explore and enjoy.
Thanks to Udo Moeller, Kurt Rosenfeld, Alexander Voropai, and others for making lots of NS32000 information available.
Many thanks to Rich $alz, Paul Vixie, and everybody else who moderated or contributed to the comp.sources.unix newsgroup, the archives of which can now be picked over for packages that will build on UTek 2.x ...
And thanks-across-time to all the people who were posting to the pdx.utek, comp.sys.nsc.32k, gnu.gcc.*, and other newsgroups as they made use of these systems in the 1980s and 90s. Especially a Tektronix employee and voice-in-the-wilderness calling themselves Snoopy T. Beagle, whose patches to gas, gcc, and gdb I hope to make use of one day.
Finally, personally, I must thank Bruce Culbertson for first interesting me in the NS32000 with the public domain 32016 design he posted to USENET way back in the 1980s. And of course I have to include Dave Rand and George Scolaro for creating NS32000 systems like the Definicon DSI-32, PD32, and PC532 designs - and the community that came together around the PC532.
