【Sharp】OA-8100 Series

Sharp rolled out the OA-8100, the industry's first UNIX office automation processor, in June 1983. Using UNIX System III as a base, Sharp developed OA/UX, which added Japanese input and output operations and extended the file access functions.

The model's primary features were as follows:

  • (1)Designed for new office automation installations in workplaces, the OA-8100 and all other models in the series were easily extensible from single-user systems to multiuser systems.
  • (2)The UNIX operating system included special Japanese-language processing functions developed exclusively by Sharp. The CPU was an MC68000, which enabled very fast processing of large amounts of complex data.
  • (3)The OA-8100 made integrated office automation applications possible, because it provided image processing for graphing numerical data and Japanese word processing, along with conventional data processing.
  • (4)In terms of communications, it supported Sharp's local area network (SRN) standard and could be extended to Ethernet-compliant LANs. It also offered native support of circuit-switching networks and packet-switched networks with leased lines or public communication lines. The OA-8100 could communicate with general-purpose computers from other companies through the provision of IBM 3270 / 3780 / 2770 emulators.

  
OA-8100 series