I think Sun was trying to be more friendly for customers who needed to run a little PC software in addition to real workstation software.
Incidentally, we were a Sun ISV and customer out in the Silicon Forest, where Sequent was located (and Intel, Tektronix...). I initially learned C++ and Smalltalk from an adjunct professor from Sequent. Also where Cray Research Superservers (nee FPS) was, who developed a multiprocessing SPARC system before Sun. Which is how, as a teen, I got sent by a marketing guy to onsite at Cray, to "port" some of our software to the Cray S-MP. It was a nice time and place, with a little like a mini version of being in Silicon Valley, but with more rain.
yup - the job interview I was talking about was for EasyStreet, one of the big local IPSs in the Portland area. we were located in beaverton off of Allen.
I also spent a lot of time in the old sequent campus, at the OSDL, and a bunch of time at OGI before it got subsumed.
I still remember the day when Microsoft visited the office, saw I had a Microsoft keyboard connected to my sparc, and asked if I ran internet explorer (they had a solaris version). I laughed and said, "no, I only have 96mb of ram, you can't run internet explorer in only 96mb of ram".
Neat. We were actually in the OGI science park. (We were the "CADRE" sign people would see, as they turned left into the park off Walker Rd., IIRC, with the wildflower field on the other side of the Walker. Earlier, the sign might've been "MicroCASE" or "NWIS". And originally a Tektronix spinoff, to build high-end in-circuit emulator hardware with workstation frontends, which evolved to include integrated full-lifecycle CASE.)
Also in the OGI science park was Verdix (makers of Ada development tools, and some kind of multilevel-secure workstation software).
I don't know what all the other companies were. But amenities included private showers for biking to work, a small forest jogging trail, and a restaurant that made nice turkey sandwiches and huge blueberry muffins to replenish those calories.
Incidentally, we were a Sun ISV and customer out in the Silicon Forest, where Sequent was located (and Intel, Tektronix...). I initially learned C++ and Smalltalk from an adjunct professor from Sequent. Also where Cray Research Superservers (nee FPS) was, who developed a multiprocessing SPARC system before Sun. Which is how, as a teen, I got sent by a marketing guy to onsite at Cray, to "port" some of our software to the Cray S-MP. It was a nice time and place, with a little like a mini version of being in Silicon Valley, but with more rain.