Ontario's Computer: The Burroughs Icon
The Burroughs ICON, a Canadian educational computer from the 1980s, faced criticism for its limited capabilities but contributed to programming education and the development of the QNX operating system.
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The Burroughs ICON, nicknamed the "bionic beaver," was a Canadian computer developed in the 1980s for educational use in Ontario schools. Funded by the Ontario government and designed by CEMCorp, it operated on the QNX UNIX-like system, created by two University of Waterloo students. The ICON featured limited hardware, including 512 KB of RAM and a 7.16 MHz 80186 CPU, with no local storage, relying instead on a LEXICON file server for booting and file management. Despite its innovative design, the ICON faced criticism for being underpowered compared to contemporaneous IBM-compatible systems, which offered more RAM, better CPUs, and extensive software libraries. The government subsidized the cost, but after a decade of negative feedback, support for the ICON was terminated in 1994, leading to the disposal of most units. However, the ICON played a significant role in teaching programming languages like C, BASIC, and Pascal, and contributed to the development of QNX, which later found success in various embedded systems, including automotive applications. The ICON remains a nostalgic symbol for many who experienced its unique design and functionality in educational settings.
- The Burroughs ICON was a government-funded educational computer used in Ontario schools.
- It operated on the QNX UNIX-like operating system, which was pivotal for its later commercial success.
- The ICON was criticized for its limited capabilities compared to IBM-compatible systems available at the time.
- Support for the ICON was discontinued in 1994 due to ongoing criticism and financial concerns.
- Despite its shortcomings, the ICON is remembered fondly by those who learned programming on it.
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9 commentsI eventually figured out a few ways to give myself root. The passwords in the password file were not hashed. First method was to spoof the login prompt. Ran it remotely from another computer on another computer that I knew the teacher would always log into. Once I succeeded in getting root's password, I put another method into one of the boot up scripts which would copy the password file somewhere else if another file was present. All I had to do then was just reboot a computer to get root's password. Later I was able to figure out the memory location where the group and user number was stored by comparing the memory dumps while being logged in as various users. Then I just needed to poke those memory locations, start a new shell, and I was root.
It's a shame that these computers have kind of disappeared. They are a part of computing history, for Ontario at least. I've contacted a few people online that still have hardware. Everyone seems to be unwilling to share what they have.
To preserve the history, I think it would help if they could be emulated. Even a modern web browser probably possesses enough computer power to emulate them. They ran on a 286, at least the early ones did.
This is a sad part of history, I vividly remember hearing this had happened. Growing up in Ontario with computer labs full of these up until the mid to late 90's, graph paper hanging on the walls with LOGO programs, and games, so many games (Oregon trail, Cross Country Canada), and then they started getting replaced with PC's in classrooms. I remember missing a local auction or something that had a bunch of these Burroughs (later Unisys) ICONs for $5/$10, but without the LEXICON server they were functionally useless, I still regret not picking one up.
Always happy whenever someone else remembers them.
Ontario's Computer: The Burroughs ICON - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30894348 - April 2022 (34 comments)
From there, somehow the GUI made it possible to trackball-and-action-key my way to admin privileges and change the login motd for everyone in the school.
My downfall was sharing that info with more destructive classmates who changed the password of the administrator and supposedly almost got me charged with mischief.
Keyboarding class in grade 9 though was made a bit more interesting despite already being able to touch type, as I somehow figured out how to drop to the (quite limited) QNX command prompt.
Well, I suppose for the same reason the "talk" command (which wrote a message to all networked terminals) was removed after the first day.
(it's shown on the motherboard, 7th image down)
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