3Station
The
3Station was a 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 5MB),
VGA-compatible graphics with 256
kB 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 neither a
floppy disk drive nor a
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's cost lay somewhere between that of an IBM PC clone and an IBM PC of the day. It was not commercially successful.
Based on material from FOLDOC, used with permission.