RDI PrecisionBook
Overview
Project names:
- PrecisionBook 132
- PrecisionBook 160
- PrecisionBook 180
These portable workstations produced by RDI (Tadpole) are essentially C132L/C160L workstations in a laptop case (which was used for other RDI computers as well, e.g. the UltraSPARC based laptops). The PrecisionBooks mostly use the same technology as the HP 9000 workstations with only slight differences. A major difference to its desktop cousins is the integrated Cardbus controller for which Tadpole supplied a driver kit for use in HP-UX, although support for actual Cardbus and PCMCIA devices was very sparse (NE2000-based Ethernet as an example). OpenBSD fully supports the Cardbus controller and a range of different Cardbus and PCMCIA devices (Fast-Ethernet, WLAN, etc).
Internals
CPU
- PrecisionBook 132: PA-7300LC 132MHz with 64/64KB on-chip I/D L1 (and 1MB off-chip unified I/D L2) cache
- PrecisionBook 160: PA-7300LC 160MHz with 64/64KB on-chip I/D L1 (and 1MB off-chip unified I/D L2) cache
- PrecisionBook 180: PA-7300LC 180MHz with 64/64KB on-chip I/D L1 (and 1MB off-chip unified I/D L2) cache
The external L2 cache is optional but was supplied with most systems.
Chipset
- LASI ASIC, which features:
- NCR 53C710 8-bit single-ended SCSI-2
- Intel 82596CA 10Mb Ethernet controller
- WD 16C522 compatible parallel
- Harmony CD/DAT quality 16-bit stereo audio
- NS 16550A compatible serial
- Dino GSC-to-PCI bridge
- Phantom PseudoBC GSC+ port
- Visualize-EG (Graffiti) graphics
- 1MB flash memory
- Intel 82503 Ethernet transceiver, media auto-selection
- CS4215 or AD1849 programmable CODECs
- WD37C65C Floppy controller
- Two Cirrus CL-PD6832 PCI-CardBus bridges
- CMD PCI0643 IDE/UDMA33 controller
» View a system-level ASCII-illustration of the chipset.
Display
- Either 12.1″ (0.24mm dot pitch) or 14.1″ (0.28mm dot pitch) active matrix LCD
- XGA resolution (1024×768)
- 16M colors plus 256 shades of gray
- 60Hz refresh
- External monitor output supports VGA, SVGA, XGA, SXGA and 1600×1200 resolutions at refresh rates of 60, 72 and 75Hz.
- At XGA operation both LCD and external CRT can be used simultaneously; if external CRT should display resolutions other than XGA, the LCD will be blanked.
Human Input
- PS/2-compatible, 97-key keyboard
- 3-button trackpad
Energy
- Lithium-Ionen battery with 40W/h capacity, 450g
- Runs about 0.5-1 hours
- Recharge time of 2.5 hours when system off
- Laptop draws about 70W continous, needs an input of 19V DC @ 3.68A from an AC adapter/charger with non-standard pinout (though there are apparently some PrecisionBooks with a more standard plug)
Buses
- GSC-2 general system-level I/O bus
- PCI-32/33 device I/O bus
- SCSI-2 Fast-Narrow single-ended bus disk I/O
- PDH bus, peripheral interface connecting to flash memory, NVRAM and PSM bus
- PSM bus, provides connection to the power-supply module
Memory
- Proprietary ECC modules, 60ns, 144-bit wide bus
- Takes 32-256MB modules, which utilize 16Mbit or 64Mbit DRAMs in either 1M×16 or 4M×16 configuration
- Two sockets
- 32MB (1×32) minimum, 512MB (2×256) maximum
Expansion
- Two Cardbus slots, supporting Cardbus and PCMCIA expansion cards
Drives
- Two trays for 2.5″ IDE hard drives with SCSI adapter (see below for more info) or for 2.5″ SCSI drives (very rare)
External Connectors
- 50-pin HD SCSI-2 single-ended
- TP/RJ45 10Mbit Ethernet
- VGA 15-pin Dsub graphics connector
- Two PS/2 connectors for keyboard/mouse
- Four phone jacks (microphone, headphones, line-in and ?)
- 15-pin connector for external floppy
- high-pin-count connector for dockingstation
- connector for an I/O breakout cable which provides:
- Two DB9 male RS232C serial
- DB25 female parallel
- AUI 10Mbit Ethernet
References
- ADTX SCSI-IDE converters information from Michael Shalayeff.
- PrecisionBook hardware reference guide (PDF, 2.0MB)
- PrecisionBook user guide (PDF, 1.4MB)
- RDI software for HP-UX 10.20 installation guide (PDF, 0.8MB)
- RDI software release notes (PDF, 0.1MB)
- SAIC Galaxy 1100 product page (archive.org mirror). Old product page with photos and details on the SAIC. Science Applications International Corporation (1996). Archive.org mirror accessed 2 Oct 2007.
Operating Systems
- HP-UX: every 32-bit release from 10.20-11.11 works.
- Linux: should work.
- NetBSD: should work.
- OpenBSD: works fine.
Benchmarks
| Model | SPEC95, int | SPEC95, fp |
|---|---|---|
| PrecisionBook 132 | 6.49 | 6.54 |
| PrecisionBook 160 | 7.78 | 7.39 |
| PrecisionBook 180 | 9.22 | 9.43 |
Compare these with other results on the Benchmarks page.