【Mitsubishi Electric】Apricot Qi Workstations and LAN Terminals

As more offices adopted LANs, a new trend toward distributed processing in client-server configurations picked up momentum. Mitsubishi Electric announced its Apricot client-server computer series in April 1991 to implement these client-server configurations. The series consisted of servers — FT servers, and client machines — Qi workstations and LAN terminals. This article describes the Qi workstations and LAN terminals.

Qi workstations were client computers with a high-performance CPU and a high-performance bus architecture. Qi workstations had the following features.

• The high-end model was standard equipped with a high-performance Intel 32-bit i486 (25 MHz) CPU and 128 KB of external cache memory, and the entry-level model used an inexpensive 32-bit 386SX (16 MHz) CPU.
• The workstations had a high-performance 32-bit MCA (micro channel architecture) bus and four expansion slots (two 32-bit slots and two 16-bit slots).
• The computers’ open architecture included a VGA (video graphics array) display control module and the DOS J 4.0/V operating system
• The workstations came with NetWare and LAN Manager, highly rated standard networking OSs,.
• The included security system had such features as infrared security card-protected logins and screen-blanking.

The LAN terminals were designed specifically as client computers. They had the following features.

• Slim, compact form factor (323 x 350 x 57 mm (w x d x h)).
• An Ethernet controller was mounted on the motherboard as standard equipment.
• Packaged with DOS J4.0/V, NetWare, and LAN Manager.
• Used an Intel 32-bit 386SX (16 MHz) CPU.