Xerox 53D 6085 Computer

1986

The Xerox 6085 was the successor of the revolutionary Xerox Star, first commercial computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI) with the familiar desktop, icons and a mouse.

The 6085 series was offered in models for network, remote (linked by Ethernet) and stand alone operation. The main unit was founded upon Xerox's Mesa 8 MHz processor which had 256 auxiliary registers and executed 48-bit-wide instructions. It also used an 80186 as an auxiliary processor.

The basic system came with 1.1 MB of memory, expandable up to 3.7 MB, a 10 to 80 MB hard disk drive, two serial ports and a 15-inch high-resolution monochrome display. An optional card allowed the 6085 to run MS-DOS software. The operating system and GUI interface was called ViewPoint. It also came from the Star. It was written in a language developed at Xerox PARC in the 1970's and also called Mesa. This strongly-typed and structured high-level language, would have a large influence on future well known languages like Pascal or C. Two improved versions were launched afterwards, the 6085-II with an almost twice as fast processor, and the XPIW (Xerox Publishing Illustrator's Workstation), basically a 6085 workstation with a scanner.

Like the Alto, the 6085 didn't meet a large success in spite of numerous vanguard concepts. This was mainly due to the Xerox marketing policy at the time to focus towards copiers rather than computers.