ICL DRS

The ICL DRS was a range of departmental computers from International Computers Limited (ICL). Standing originally for Distributed Resource System, the full name was later dropped in favour of the abbreviation.

During the mid-1980s separate Office Systems business units had produced a disparate range of products including IBM-compatible PCs such as the PWS (a PC/AT clone), small servers branded DRS, and various larger Unix servers sold under the Clan range. A rebranding in late 1988 pulled these together under the DRS brand, with a consistent mid-grey and peppermint-green livery.

The ICL division responsible for these systems eventually became part of the Fujitsu-Siemens joint venture.

DRS 20/100/200

The original DRS was the DRS 20 produced in Utica, New York and launched in September 1981. This ran the proprietary DRX (Distributed Resource Executive) operating system. The basic 'intelligent terminal' (model 10/110/210) used 8-bit 8085 processors (workstation, application and network processors), each with between 32 KB and 128 KB of memory. The Model 210 also had an 80188 application processor with 512 KB to run CP/M. The larger models 20 and 40 had floppy disk drives. The floor-standing models 50, 150, and 250 had hard disks, from which diskless models booted. In early models, these were 8" floppy disks, and later 5¼" disks.