Talk:Xerox Star

Why Star was slow

Grumble. There are several unimportant inaccuracies in this article, but I bristled at the line "Finally, by today's standards, the software would be considered very slow, taxing the limited hardware of the era."

The software was so incredibly optimized, you wouldn't believe it. The problem was the lack of physical memory on this pathetic hardware platform. If memory serves, Star something like a half a megabyte of real memory. Programmers spent long hard hours "packaging" the software to minimize paging, but the poor thing was just constantly swapping itself to death. It was a nightmare.

If Star had had today's complement of 256 MB or more of RAM, it would have rocked. But 25 years ago, memory was expensive, and a Xerox executive made the bad decision that software optimizations could overcome the lack of memory. He was fatally wrong. - Rlw (Talk) 04:23, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

This is true. In fact, in the final version of this product the virtual machine had been ported so that it ran on top of Windows 95. It was MUCH faster than Microsoft Office, and much more powerful. Even with just 1.5MB of RAM the system ran well -- there was little swapping with that much memory. The initial CPU was about equivalent in performance to a Motorola 68000 processor. Since then we've seen at least 3000 times improvement in processor speed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.180.82.153 (talk) 02:39, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Proprietary architecture

I think I've read that you needed a special key from Xerox to write programs for the Star. Is this true? If so, I'd say that the proprietary architecture put it at a heavy disadvantage vs. the IBM PC. Perhaps this should be listed in the article as a possible reason for its failure.

Baccala@freesoft.org 05:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

No, you just had to have the Xerox Development Environment which included the Mesa Language (precursor to Modula and Java) and all the Interface Definitions. Starting in 1985 or 1986 this product was available for purchase -- and some major customers did write custom software for Xerox Star, well really Xerox Viewpoint -- the "open" version of Star that was released in 1985/6. However, like anyone at that time trying to learn to really program in Smalltalk, learning to program in Mesa could take as much as 6 months. It wasn't the language that was difficult, but vew people had been exposed to lightweight threads, memory mapped files, semaphors and object oriented programming in those days. And, it always takes time to learn a large number of libraries (Java, Smalltalk or Mesa) before you can do serious programming. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.180.82.153 (talk) 02:33, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Apple

Nowhere is it motioned that Apple paid Xerox about 3 mil in stock options. I also wasn't aware that Xerox sued Apple. Was this part of the reason that Xerox lost the suit. Maybe someone more knowledgeable on this subject could clear this up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TrevorLSciAct (talk • contribs) 14:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Article Structure and Verifiability

Some parts of this article are way too informal. Sounds like a chat between buddies. I know wikipedia is for everyone etc. but this is something else.--MrBobla 00:35, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with MrBobla. I have no reason to think that this article violates NPOV (I evaluated a loan unit of the 8010/40 for several months in 1987) but there are too many unsourced statements to be compatible with the Verifiability and No original research rules. IMO this is important because the Star is popularly regarded as the prime mover behind the WYSIWYG and compound document initiatives by all major vendors, and this article will therefore be a first point of call for many students. It follows that the article should meet the highest standards demanded by Wikipedia. Until it does so, I recommend that it be tagged 'refimprove' as a warning to readers. Pointillist (talk) 23:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Pzavon makes a fair point about 'I personally attended and heard this' being almost O.R. I was thinking "I'm sure this is true and somewhere I'll find confirmation, so this was just a placeholder". I am still searching for a verifiable source for the assertion that the IBM Displaywriter used the 8086 CPU. IBM UK said this at the launch and plenty of sites say so too, including Intel 8086 here on Wikipedia with no source cited (I've now marked that 'fact' to encourage others to find a source). BTW I've looked through much of the IBM Journal of Research & Development vol 25 issue 5 (at http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/journal/rd/255//ibmrd2505B.pdf thru http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/journal/rd/255//ibmrd2505ZI.pdf) but no luck so far. Pointillist (talk) 00:14, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I am cerainly no expert in "the way things are done" in the Wikipedia, but I would have thought that one of the citation-needed templates would be an ideal citation place holder, and would not raise issues of original research, etc., for those not aware of the editor's placeholder intentions. Pzavon (talk) 04:14, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

August 2009

The marketing and reception section might also contain original research. David Delony (talk) 00:30, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I understand the concerns about verifiability etc.. However, it seems that the impact of the IBM PC and Macintosh on the Xerox Star (and on Xerox computer strategy, and on Xerox PARC's Computer Sciences Laboratory and the founding of DEC SRC) has been all but deleted from the article. That is sort of like an article on World War II that does not mention the A-bomb. Unfortunately I cannot provide better references than my own testimonial. I am sure that much of that history (and much more) is related in the Fumbling the Future book, but I don't have it and it will be hard to find in libraries around here. Technical or semi-technical journals like Communications of the ACM and IEEE Computer Magazine probably did not report on that sort of thing. There may be scattered news about that in trade magazines (such as Byte or Datamation) from those years; I wonder whether those issues are online? All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:13, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

"MESA CPU"

Prior to the mention of a "MESA CPU", Mesa was only referenced in the article as a programming language. Under Hardware description, though, I note that it does say "Its microprogrammed, bit-sliced CPU ran a virtual machine for the Mesa programming language" without naming this as a MESA CPU. Is this bit-sliced CPU indeed known as the "MESA CPU" ? --NapoliRoma (talk) 04:43, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

A stack-based, byte-coded instruction set was defined as a target for Mesa compilers; that instruction set was implemented in microcode on the Alto and, later, on the D-machines. The Dolphin was based on MSI-level chips such as the 74181; the Dandelion, the processor used in the 8010, was based on the larger-scale AMD AM2901 chips; the Dorado used ECL rather than the TTL used by the other two.

I was one of the designers of the Dolphin and Dorado. The Dorado came first. I worked on the memory system for that. The Dolphin was the second machine (I designed a lot of the I/O system for that) and the Dandelion came last (I was no longer at PARC for that machine).Brtech99 (talk) 14:15, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

So are there any documents, either under http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/ or in somebody else's hands (handing them to bitsavers.org might be nice if the latter is the case), indicating the order in which the various D-machines came out (and whether the Dorado was called the "D1" except in, say, the file names in http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/dorado/Dorado_Microassembler_Jul1980.pdf)? Guy Harris (talk) 08:50, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

The Butler Lampson paper at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/1988/01/Personal-distributed-computing-The-Alto-and-Ethernet-software-HOPW-book-version.pdf says "the Dolphin, with about twice the power of the Alto and ten times the memory, first ran in 1978; the Dorado, ten times an Alto, in 1979; the Dandelion, three times an Alto, in 1980." Guy Harris (talk) 19:13, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

The "Mesa CPU add-on board" was presumably some flavor of CPU, probably running microcode to implement the Mesa instruction set. Guy Harris (talk) 10:05, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Would the "Mesa CPU add-on board" have been the Daylily? Guy Harris (talk) 20:02, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Smalltalk

It is unclear what Smalltalk has to do in this article. Search for the "smalltalk" character string and see for yourself. Thanks in advance for clarifying (or pruning).
--Jerome Potts (talk) 11:31, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Because there's no page about the Xerox D* machine line, separate from pages about the commercial products made from those machines, this page has been used as a place to put some information about PARC/SDD systems other than the Star. See, for example, Xerox Star § Hardware, in which the first paragraph is about the D* machine family, the second and third paragraphs are about D* machines other than the Dandelion, and the last paragraph is about commerical products made from various D* machines, including but not limited to the Dandelion. Guy Harris (talk) 02:48, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Bushy Tree

The author of the "Contributions and Downfall of the Xerox Star" link has started a Wiki (at http://bushytree.wikia.com) using the bushy tree diagram as a diving board. It's much too early to make it into a Wiki portal as it is two weeks old from the time of this message. Editors and authors are encouraged to help hammer it into shape. BushyTree (talk) 18:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Dubious timeline vs IBM PC and Apple Mac

The History section begins by saying that "the commercial value of the personal workstation concept and innovations embodied in the Alto were... spectacularly demonstrated by IBM's Personal Computer and Apple's Macintosh [1]. Xerox's eventually responded with the Star line of products" (see this revision). I don't see how this can be so:

• The 8010 Star was launched in 1981 [1];
• The IBM PC was launched in August 1981 and shipped in limited quantities in October (Chposky & Leonsis, Blue Magic (1988) ISBN 0816013918, pp110, 113);
• Apple's development of the Macintosh was under way in 1981 and Microsoft started developing for it in early 1982 (Wallace & Erickson, Hard Drive (1992), ISBN 0471568864, p220) but the Mac was not announced until late 1983 and shipped in January 1984.

So with all due respect to the editor - possibly he is thinking of the introduction of the 6085 not the 8010 - it seems to me that the 8010 wasn't in response to anything that Apple or IBM did in the PC space. Star was part of Xerox's office automation vision based on Interpress, laser printers (5700 etc) and Ethernet/ Cedar/IFS, all of which date from 1980. There was a separate line of Xerox PCs (beginning with the Z80-based Xerox 820 that shipped a little earlier than the IBM PC in 1981). - Pointillist (talk) 15:46, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

You are probably right. But the Macintosh did drop onto PARC and Xerox like a bomb. I was an intern at PARC at the time; I well remember the shocked reaction among the PARC folks -- rage, frustration, disgust, you name it. People gathered in the auditorium and played the Macintosh ads on the big screen (including the Superbowl one with the skinheads and shattered big-brother). A few guys were in full denial mode, laughing and poking fun at the "ridiculous" Mac. For, although Xerox already had the Star, it was 10 times more expensive, at least. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 03:42, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Dubious II - perspective

I've deleted [from this article's History section: The Xerox Alto sub-section] Prof Stolfi's text

"The success of IBM's much cheaper Personal Computer (launched later that same year) started a worrisome market trend, but it did not have an immediate effect on Xerox's product policy. On the other hand, the surprise launch of the Macintosh by Apple was a rude shock for Xerox. The Macintosh "stole the show" from the Star, as it incorporated several of its most visible features (mouse, bitmap screen, WYSYWIG document editing) into a PC-class machine. The strategic mistake put Xerox out of the computer business, and soured the relations between Xerox's management and the Alto developers at PARC, who left the company en masse in early 1985."

because the Star was positioned as superior to existing IBM Office Systems (eg. OS/6, 5520 and DisplayWriter) and IBM positioned the PC as significantly inferior to these systems. So comparison with the original IBM PC is irrelevant. - Pointillist (talk) 00:29, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

• My knowledge of the 1980s computer market is very scant, but I believe that the above is indeed a fair record of what people inside and outside Xerox were saying at the time. When the Alto and other early experimental graphics-based personal workstations came out, even those who could see their potential assumed that the commercial versions would be expensive machines limited to the enterprise market. For example, I recall Edward Feigenbaum saying that providing a $100K workstation for an employee whose salary was $100-$200K/year would not be a luxury, but just sensible investment. Xerox's design and marketing for the Star were based on that view of the future. So, although the PC did not immediately compete with the Xerox workstations, it was the first step towards the "wrong" future --- one where personal workstations good enough for corporate office use would cost 1/10th of what people had expected. But that omen only became obvious after the Mac came out. (Fumbling the Future is all about this story. I did not read that book, but some of the main protagonists apparently approved of it.) --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:01, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Nice to see you here again! If you don't mind reading a long reply, here's my perspective:

I don't see how Xerox's failure to let the IBM PC have "an immediate effect on [8000 series] product policy" was a mistake at the time. After all, the 8088 CPU wasn't a threatening choice, and most of IBM didn't realise what they had done when they created the original PC using commodity components in an open architecture with a full BIOS listing. IMO there are better possibilities for the title of "strategic mistake", e.g.

• Failure to re-develop the original design for greater reliability and speed, e.g. by eliminating threshing. In the late 1970s/early 1980s Word Processors were seen as "appliances" that were supposed to just work when you switched them on, and never [cough] lose your work.
• Lack of a "value engineered" model, e.g. with a smaller screen (like the 860DTS, perhaps), ready to compete with Apollo/Domain workstations.
• No partnering models for ISVs and value added resellers. This meant that all demonstrations had to be organised by Xerox's expensive field sales force (by comparison, if you wanted to show an Apple Lisa at a conference, all you had to do was pick up the phone to an Apple VAR). Because third parties weren't attracted to develop applications on the platform, Xerox missed the opportunity to enter niche markets that would have boosted sales volume and driven down unit cost.
• Failure to promote 8000 series networking as a way to link systems from other vendors into the Xerox infrastructure. This meant that organisations with an existing investment in non-Xerox word processing systems—precisely the target market for the Star—had no obvious way to share the benefits of the Star around the office.

Those are all strategic issues that could have been handled differently. I do agree with you that the Mac should have triggered some thoughts about what the future might hold, and some rapid development to bring down the entry-level price for Xerox's offering. Anyway, this is all WP:OR really. We need a reliable source that tells the story. - Pointillist (talk) 12:30, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

broken link

Some people feel that Apple, Microsoft, and others plagiarized the GUI and other innovations from the Xerox Star, and believe that Xerox didn't properly protect its intellectual property. The truth is more complicated. Many patent disclosures were in fact submitted for the innovations in the Star; however, at the time the 1975 Xerox Consent Decree, an FTC antitrust action, placed restrictions on what the company was able to patent.[13]

1. ^ "The 1975 Xerox Consent Decree: Ancient Artifacts and Current Tensions" (PDF). Willard K. Tom. Retrieved on 2007-02-08.

This PDF link is broken. 72.14.165.102 (talk) 18:42, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The article was readilly found on another site using a simple Yahoo search, and I have now fixed the broken link. Pzavon (talk) 04:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

The article lacks time sense

I was buying and organizing wordprocessor workplaces for a big part of the Swedish telecom in the first years of the 80ies and wp-machines at this time were in todays views extremely expensive and performance and function poor, but extremely cost saving and quality enhancing for the customers/buyers. Most cost saving of all was the IBM XT for 10.000 USD in Swedish currency in 1984 because SW editing in systems like IBM TSO and MVS could be made off line and uploaded saving mainframe time costs. In our method/tech/economy office the type-girls had one each and we shared one Philips 5003 (cost about 13000 USD) by 18 persons. At that time we had Xerox and Philips WP-products and later we could not understand how they could so utterly fail the market the following years.

We meet the Xerox sales staff and the showed us the Xerox Star/Alto/Bigben system and after a quick view on standing foot we responded, looks great we like 3 of them asp, when can you deliver? We saw them as fantastic machines to start to be able to supply not just texts but also tech and economy processing integrated in the document production. I promise we were not alone. Meeting the Xerox sales guys a few months later and ask the, well how about the Bigbens? Oh, the bosses just cut down that product line, and that was it about Xerox, I never seen a Xerox sales person since.

Two years later I came to one of the largest banks in Sweden and continued working with text systems and also IBM were Horribly in being slow supplying DisplayWrite for PCs the the multifunction aspect of the PCs made them evidently very fit for many more units, one per person soon.

Lack of features of the Xerox stuff??? Hey, 1983 my friends at a Miltek company were 5 persons sharing 64K in PDP. The Phillips 5003 wp had one huge diskette station and a monochrome screen for 13000 USD.

This Xerox start legend is about how Xerox wasted their reign, they were kings on the market and just dropped out. One of the hugest management dropouts made (even tough the PC market have had quite a few huge trees falling strait down due to plain mismanagement anyone can see at once before they felled. Seeing the Macintosh released was like seeing an old friend.

I think management and sales force adaptation was the main issues about Xerox here. Certainly not the tech, the customers and not the extreme prices. We<were lining to buy the goods. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zzalpha (talk • contribs) 02:27, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

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