The
3Station was the archetypal diskless workstation, developed by [Bob Metcalfe]
? at
3Com and first available in
1986. The 3Station/2E had a 10 MHz
? 80286 processor, 1
megabyte of
RAM (expandable to 5 MB), VGA
?-compatible graphics with 256 kilobytes of video RAM, and integrated AUI/BNC network transceivers for LAN
? access. The product used a single printed-circuit board with four custom ASICs. It had no [floppy disk drive]
? or
hard disk; it was booted from a server and stored all end-user files there.
3Com advertised "significant cost savings" due to the 3Station's ease of installation and low maintenance (this would now be referred to under the banner of [[Total Cost of Ownership]?).
The 3Station cost somewhere between an [IBM PC clone]? and an IBM PC of the day. It was not commercially successful.
Based on material from FOLDOC, used with permission.
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