mini versus micro?

[Fred Cisin]

On Wed, 18 May 2005, Scott Stevens wrote:
> Interesting way to skew it, but it 'breaks' somewhat with certain older
> microprocessor based systems.  My Altos 586, for instance, has 5 serial
> ports all designed to host a user on a dumb terminal.  But it has an
> 8086 processor.  So it's explicitly a multiuser machine, but with a
> single chip micro.
>
> An interesting 'dividing line' that I like to use is 'does a keyboard
> plug into it?'  Is it primarily designed as a single-user workstation,
> with keyboard and display attached?

Good idea, but that one also has plenty of exceptions.  Machines such as
Morrow, Northstar, etc. required an external terminal, in spite of being
single user.