Personal distributed computing: the Alto and Ethernet hardware

ABSTRACT

Between 1972 and 1980, the first distributed personal computing system was built at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The system was composed of a number of Alto workstations connected by an Ethernet local network. It also included servers that provided centralized facilities. This paper describes the development of the hardware that was the basis of the system.

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Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Computers in other domains

    • Personal computers and PC applications

      • Microcomputers

• Human-centered computing

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)

• Networks

  • Network architectures

  • Network properties

    • Network range

      • Local area networks

      • Wide area networks

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • History of computing

      • History of hardware

• Software and its engineering

  • Software notations and tools

    • General programming languages

      • Language types

        • Functional languages

• Theory of computation

  • Logic

  • Models of computation