Unisys ICON
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The system was packaged as an all-in-one machine similar to the Commodore PETand included a trackball for mouse-like control. The ICON was widely used, mostly in high schools in the mid to late s, but disappeared after that time with the widespread introduction of PCs and Apple Macintoshes. The machine was also nicknamed the bionic beaver. Inthree years after the first usable microcomputers appeared, the Ontario Ministry of Education sensed that microcomputers could be an important component of education.
In June the Minister of EducationBette Stephensonannounced the need for computer literacy for all students and formed the Advisory Committee on Computers in Education to guide their efforts.
It is now clear that one of robot r&d unisys icon major goals that education must add to its list of purposes, is computer literacy. The world of the very near future robot r&d unisys icon that all of us have some understanding of the processes and uses of computers.
According to several contemporary sources, Stephenson was the driving force behind the project; "whenever there was a problem she appears to have 'moved robot r&d unisys icon and earth' to get it back on the tracks. The Ministry recognized that a small proportion of teachers and other school personnel were already quite involved with microcomputers and that some schools were acquiring first-generation machines.
These acquisitions robot r&d unisys icon uneven, varying in brand and model not just between school boards, but among schools within boards and even classroom to classroom.
The Ministry wanted to encourage uses of microcomputers that supported its curriculum guidelines and was willing to underwrite the development of software for that purpose.
However, the wide variety of machines being used meant that development costs had to be spread over several platforms. Additionally, many of the curriculum topics they wanted to cover required more storage or graphics capability than at least some of the machines then in use, if not all of them. Educational software was in its infancy, and many hardware acquisitions were made without a clear provision for educational software or a plan for use.
A series of Policy Memos followed outlining the Committee's views. Policy Memo 47 stated that computers are to be used creatively, and for information retrieval; at the time most robot r&d unisys icon were used solely for programming.
They also announced funding for the development of educational software on an estimated machines. The Ministry decided that standardizing the computers would reduce maintenance costs, and allow for the development of consistent educational software. Policy Memos followed in earlystating that none of the existing platforms had all the qualities needed to be truly universal.
When the plan was first announced there was widespread concern among educators. Their main complaint is that the Ministry would select a standard that was not powerful enough for their needs. A secondary concern was that the time delay between announcing and introducing the computer would be lengthy, a period in which existing purchases could be funded instead.
The first set of concerns were rendered moot when the specifications were introduced in March in the "Functional Requirements for Microcomputers for Educational Use in Ontario Schools--Stage I. Inside the robot r&d unisys icon, the specification called for a processor and support systems to allow robot r&d unisys icon multitasking operating system to be used, selecting the Intel as the CPU.
Color graphics were specified, at least as an option, along with monochrome and color monitors on top. Voice synthesis was built in, and the keyboard provided for accented characters. Additionally, the systems would include no local storage at all, and would instead rely on robot r&d unisys icon networked file server containing a hard drive.
The specification was considerably robot r&d unisys icon advance of the state of the art of the time, and when it was delivered commentators immediately reversed their earlier concerns and suggested the machine was too powerful, and would therefore be available in too small numbers.
The entire program was politically explosive throughout its gestation as a result, causing a continual stream of news stories. Critics complained that other machines could be bought for half the cost, but supporters pushed back robot r&d unisys icon no other machine at that price point supported the GEMS specifications.
Around this time other robot r&d unisys icon, such as the Waterloo PORT networking system, gained approval for the government support that robot r&d unisys icon originally been the province of the ICON.
The basic ICON design had reached "beta quality" after just over a year, using off the shelf parts, the hardware manufactured by Microtel and operating system from Quantum Software Systems.
The original Microtel machines were first introduced robot r&d unisys icon Ontario schools in in small numbers, packaged in a short-lived dark brown case. At this point Burroughs Canada was brought in to sell and support the machine. It wasn't long after this that Sperry and Burroughs merged to form Unisys in They were built into the early s, but by this point were used almost entirely for running DOS and Windows programs.
Throughout the project's lifetime it was subject to continual debate and much political rhetoric. A article on the topic complained that. Bette Stephenson favoured top-down decision making and as a result got trapped robot r&d unisys icon her tunnel vision. Her ICON computer fiasco drained millions from the provincial treasury and created a white elephant scorned by boards and shunned by teachers Computer resources were forced upon the school system as a result of a top-down government decision that was taken precipitously and without research.
This was controversial in its own right, as others maintained that it could be sent to other schools that lacked extensive Information Technology. Despite the development of the ICON program, equality among schools was not assured because each school community could afford different capital outlays depending on the robot r&d unisys icon affluence. Both the workstations and the servers were similar internally, based on Intel microprocessorsand connected to each other using ARCNET.
Several upgrades were introduced into the ICON line over time. The ICON2 sported a redesigned case, a detached keyboard with integrated trackball, expanded RAM, and facilities for an internal robot r&d unisys icon disk. The original ICON workstations were housed in a large wedge-shaped steel case, with a full-sized keyboard mounted slightly left-of-center and a trackball mounted to the right.
A rubber bumper-strip ran along the front edge, a precaution against a particular type of cut users sometimes got from the PET's sharp case. It also included TI 's TMS speech chip, originally designed for the TIand would speak the vaguely obscene word "dhtick" when starting up.
Early Microtel machines were dark brown, but the vast majority of examples robot r&d unisys icon the classroom were a more nondescript beige. Later Lexicons included a 64MB hard disk, divided into two partitions. Unlike the PET's floppy system, however, users of the ICON used Unix commands to copy data to their personal floppy disks from its "natural" location in the user's home directory on the hard drive.
Both the client and server ran the Unix-like QNX as their operating system with the addition of network file-sharing, the basic portions of it embedded in ROM. The system included a Paint programme that used the trackball, but did not include a usable GUIalthough there were several attempts to produce one. A later upgrade called ICONLook improved upon this greatly, but it was apparently too slow to use realistically. The biggest problem for the machine was a lack of software.
The ICON was originally designed to let teachers create and share their own lessonware, using a simple hypertext-based system where pages could either link to other pages or run programs written in "C".
The "anyone can create lessonware" model was rejected by the Ministry of Education before the ICON shipped in favour of a model where the Ministry funded and controlled all lessonwareleaving the ICON with only the QNX command line interface and the Cemcorp-developed text editor application.
The various Watcom programming languages were quickly ported to the system, but beyond that, the educational software teachers expected was few and far between. The Ministry contracted for a number of applications, but the small target market and the sometimes-difficult procedure required to secure such contracts were significant obstacles for realistic commercial development.
Although the Icon was terminated, the QNX operating system is alive and well, if particularly different from its earliest versions. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. March Learn how and when to remove this template message. Northwestern State University, Jones, "Shaping Educational Technology: Retrieved from " https: Unisys Microcomputers Education in Ontario. Articles needing additional references from March All articles needing additional references Use dmy dates from September Views Read Edit View history.
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