|
The RM Nimbus system was a proprietary computer system developed by the UK company Research Machines Limited, aimed mainly at the UK schools market. It could be as simple as a single stand-alone workstation, or a complex network, or multiple machines all running their own proprietary software - or modified software from other software houses. ==Nimbus Network== A normal Nimbus network was a collection of workstations, and one or more servers. The original system was developed with the Nimbus AX as the server and the Nimbus PC-186 as the workstation, or print server. Later on the VX series was introduced as a replacement for the AX server, and the PC-286 and PC-386 workstations were produced. AX or VX machines could also operate as workstations if required, for example, if an AX server had been replaced by a VX, the AX could find general use as a workstation. The server would act as both a network boot server, file and print server. Any type of Nimbus machine (usually a PC-186) could in addition be added to act as a dedicated print server, however all print jobs were still routed via the main server and then the jobs copied as files from the server to the print server over the network. This in theory prevented the server from having to copy data to the parallel port and freeing up CPU cycles for other tasks, however it also put more data onto the network bus. However, this function was useful if two printers were needed (usually one color and one black and white), as the original AX/VX machines only had one parallel port, and serial printing was rapidly becoming non standard. The network was connected via BNC cable with T-pieces and ran on Zilog's Z-Net system. It allowed up to 127 workstations to be connected and booted directly from the network server. A complex user log-on system - with significant vulnerabilities (including passing plain text passwords) - was implemented allowing multiple user groups and for each group to be assigned a different menu structure in the original user interface, or different Program Manager windows in the later Windows 3.0 interface. For example, in Windows 3.1, the 'File' menu was missing from Program Manager, preventing users from running programs other than what the network administrator intended. Most workstations were also equipped with a Piconet port but this rapidly became redundant due to the higher speeds with Z-net. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「RM Nimbus」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|