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In lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto, Richard Noeckel writes:
> In lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto, Iain Hendry writes:
> > the new-at-the-time UNISYS Icon computers. They were pretty
> > stupid though. Something about a huge ball in the corner and an "Action"
> > button. I think I hated them.
>
> I remember those!!! :-)
> They were the standard @ my school during the early nineties.
> My friends and I use to just hold down the action key for like
> ten-seconds and then walk away… The computers would start ‘beeping’
> for about 10 mins… lol so funny, such good memories. The teachers could
> never figure what the problem was and always ended up taking the network
> off-line.
(this is largely OT but a good example of engineering gone bad)
Ah, yes. The great ICON. For those non Canadian (or maybe even non
Ontario) readers, the ICON was undoubtably one of the greatest examples of
Canadian government institutional ingenuity. (This is said with a great deal
of sarcasm)
Basically, in the eighties, the Canadian government realized kids would need
computers in schools, and instead of offering them Commodore 64's, Apple
IIs, Macs or PCs, they...get this...DECIDED TO DESIGN THEIR OWN MACHINE.
Hardware, OS, applications, everything. Typical Canadian thinking I suppose.
A company called CEMCORP (Canadian Educational Microprocessors (or
Microcomputers, I can't remember) did the total package, though apparently
Burroughs did the hardware. The first draft was an 80186 (yes, 186, it's
used in a lot of embedded hardware) CPU based machine with about a half a
meg of RAM, that used Arcnet networking, came with a 14 monochrome or colour
monitor, and had the trackball Richard remembers. The ICONs had integral
CGA graphics, and ran QNX as a core OS with ICONLOOK as a GUI overtop. The
entire thing was a single piece chassis.
The Icon was the workstation, they had a headless unit with two 30 or 60MB
hard disks called a Lexicon that acted as a server.
Eventually CEMCORP was bought out by Unisys or took the license, and they
came out with the ICON2, a much prettier unit with a 286. This one had a
separate keyboard. Finally, a PC hardware version used a 386SX and was
called I think the ICON3.
The ICON was a classic example of government bureaucracy and poor systems
deployment. The machine itself was very very far ahead of it's time.
Networked workstations with multiuser workspaces that students could log
into any machine and get access to their own stories, pictures, and saved
game/progress files, were a great idea. The hardware was incredibly durable
and was very obviously done with good user-centered design in mind-knowing
that small children would abuse the hardware, they built it very
tough-everything from the heavy duty trackball to the heavy sheetmetal
casings. Once some students accidentally poured a bucket of water into an
ICON2 powered up while washing the blackboard, the ICON2 was immediately
unplugged and dried out-it recovered without trouble afterwards!
The problem really was the deployment-at the time (and still today)
computers weren't properly integrated into the school curriculum, and the
staff (libraries, teachers) had no idea how to operate the ICON's
administrator features. There weren't any project champions in each school
to encourage the use of the machines, save a few progressive teachers and
principals. In fact, the kids probably knew more than the librarians, who
really didn't care to learn anything about them. Individually creating
hundreds of accounts for every student in the school was time consuming, so
most schools assigned each machine a login name like "A", "B" etc and didn't
use any of the multiuser features.
Because there weren't enough ICONs (which were apparently $3000 per machine,
and $9000 per server), most schools put them all in one room, namely the
library. And as a result, time on the ICONs was short, relegated to an hour
a week.
The software, too, was problematic. While the pedagogical elements I'm not
qualified to speak about, the system implementations were relatively poor.
most of them were poor quality implementations by academic institutions
(namely, the University of Waterloo). By the time of the ICON2, it was
obvious that PCs were a better choice, but the school boards still had to
push the ICON system, so they often ran PC software using a very slow emulator.
In the end, the ICON stank of a design by committee, pork barrel type of
operation that pervades government/public sector systems acquisition. In
the years later, most schools signed deals with companies like Commodore for
similar systems.
Calum
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: =UNISYS Icon's=
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| Three (3) things: (...) Firstly, I knew that a post concerning a classic computer system would incur a reasonable amount of nostalgia. And thus instigate someone to provide a detailed background sketch with an *abundance of info. Of which I'm duly (...) (22 years ago, 4-Mar-02, to lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | =UNISYS Icon's=
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| (...) I remember those!!! :-) They were the standard @ my school during the early nineties. My friends and I use to just hold down the action key for like ten-seconds and then walk away… The computers would start ‘beeping’ for about 10 mins… lol so (...) (22 years ago, 4-Mar-02, to lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto)
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