International Business Machines X-Station 130

    Have you ever wished you could get the ease- of- use and flexibility that a windowing environment offers but without the hassle of maintaining a fully- blown computer system?

    Well here it is. No moving parts, save a single small fan, and no local disk drive (although the X-station 130 could be configured with a 30 Mo one) to crash or get corrupted.

    The X-station 130 is based around Intel's 80C186 microprocessor and a Texas Instruments TMS34020 video processor. X-window code is down- line loaded via an Ethernet (or optional token ring) connection from a host processor. This particular example has two megabytes of mainstore which gets divided between code and graphics resources (e.g. fonts) and 1 MB of video RAM. The one here runs at 1024 x 768 resolution on a standard multi- sync monitor. This example lacks the optional disk drive.

    The attached peripherals are standard X-window fare: a keyboard and a three- button mouse. A tablet could be fitted to the device if absolute positioning (e.g. for digitising) was required.

    While IBM strongly hint that the X-station 130 must operate alongside, and with, RS/6000- based systems, I've found that the 130 can be booted and operated in a non- IBM environment. In fact, I boot mine from a Linux system and perform login services from a second. Here's how .

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